


Mean, but cute

by Crowsister (orphan_account)



Category: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Cartoon 2018)
Genre: F/M, Implied Offscreen Interactions, Time Skips, i saw the magic elements of the setting and ran away with them, no editor we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-07-04 19:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15847932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Crowsister
Summary: Mikey leaned over, taking Donnie’s face and nudging him away from the party. Watching him with a smug smile was the cat burglar, sitting on the edge of the roof a few blocks away from him and twirling the necklace around her finger like a toy. She wiggled her fingers in a wave, mouthing a few taunts his way.“Did she just call you slow and cute?” Mikey asked.“The specific words don’t actually matter, she’s just making fun of me,” Donnie grumbled, getting up and pushing his goggles up. “Like usual.”





	1. First Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> Based off of that one throwaway line in “War and Pizza”. Highly self indulgent, lots of time skips and implied character interactions.
> 
> "What if Rise!Donnie had to deal with a Catwoman-esque figure?" I asked myself ages ago. Then I threw out the sexual bits of that immediately because nah. Nah. Nah. Left me with a punning, insecure, highly clever and smart thief, which I figured was enough. Was originally my attempt at an X Reader fic, but man, can I not sink into that style. At all. So the reader insert turned into an OC. Who I wasn't intended on having. But it just HAPPENED.
> 
> Magic used in fic is _somewhat_ based off of DND stuff, but with some mechanics turned around.
> 
> Word of warning, this is my first time rolling around with these characters and this was originally written before the TV Air date. Doing my best.

“Okay, it’s too quiet,” Raph replied, “how the shell am I gonna test my guns out with this kind of quiet?”

Mikey blinked, looking over at Raph. “Wait, who let you have guns?”

Raph flexed his biceps, grinning. “Sun’s not out, so the guns are _out_ _!”_

“You almost saved the meter,” Donnie replied, typing at his wrist-mounted touchpad. “Almost.”

Leo sighed, leaning back from his perch at the side of the rooftop and looking over at his brothers. Everyone was spread out about the roof in different positions in various shades of boredom. “Guys, guys, guys, c’mon, we gotta do something better than this! We busted those paper thieves yesterday, there’s gotta be-”

“Sh.” Donnie raised a finger to his lips, looking into the distance before going back to typing.

“Don’t you tell me to shush-”

Alarms broke out in the direction that Donnie had been looking at. All three of Donnie’s brothers blinked at the building, then each other, before looking at Donnie.

“How?” Leo asked.

Donnie snorted. “I’d been hacking into local wifi networks and saw the blip. Someone’s breaking in to the museum, which is _around_ the building I’d been looking at. Go figure.”

“Okay guys, let’s go!” Raph replied. “While there’s still plenty of moonlight for my babies to shine!”

“Okay seriously,” Mikey replied, snorting, “who let you have _babies?”_

* * *

It’d been easy-in, easy-out. Honestly, the only reason she set off the alarms in the first place was to watch the cops and get some drama going on in this city that didn’t have to do with weird stuff (mutant outbreaks got stale after a while). She only got the frosting on the cake when she realized someone unexpected had been watching the security system.

She leaned against the roof access roof, playing with the diamond she’d stolen from the museum in her gloved hands while she considered her options. She’d caught a hint of the person’s IP address, behind several proxies. Hunting the voyeur down wouldn’t be that hard. Part of the fun was to figure out the who, what, why of the voyeur. Just to thank them.

“That doesn’t belong to you, little lady.”

She looked up, still tossing the diamond between her hands as she scanned her new, possibly-related party guests. “Oh, cute. Mutant turtles in a nice, color-coded quartet. You gonna bite me if I don’t put the diamond back where I found it?”

“Somethin’ like that,” red-coded turtle replied, popping his neck. Must’ve been some kind of weightlifter before being mutated.

The purple-coded one sighed, rolling his eyes. He replied, “Or we could be smart about this. There’s four of us, one of you. We could make this real easy if you just give us the diamond and leave.”

The three other turtles stared at him incredulously and she _laughed_.

“Now, now. That wouldn’t be _any_ fun,” she replied, chuckling. “So I’ll be smart in my own purrrrrrfect way.” The cat burglar winked and backflipped off the building. She hid under the lip of the building, taking advantage of the roof and sinking her claws into it.

She smirked, listening to them. “I had my punches all ready and she _bolts_?” That had to be the big red one.

“Well, yeah.” Purple. “I’d run if I saw you all pumped up to punch me too.”

“Awww, Don, that’s sweet, you sayin’ I’m all ferocious to evil punks.”

“I try. What’s the plan?”

New voice. She figured either blue or orange, but had difficulty assigning either of them the inquisitive tone. “Maybe split up, try to trap her, yell if we see her?”

“Make it a race, maybe,” Red replied. “First one to find her gets bragging rights and first choice of slices for a week?”

“I’m down,” said yet another new voice. “Let’s stop wasting time and find her.”

She waited, hearing them all scramble. She traced a small rune on the side of her goggles, smirking as she saw a purple trail. She followed it for a while in both directions, confirming what she’d already suspecting.

“This might feed me physically,” she muttered, fingering the diamond, “but that’s the real treasure. A possible challenge.”

The cat burglar slipped off, tracing a rune along a wall and slipping into her home turf down below.


	2. Liar

The cat burglar found herself using the same glamour as the last couple times she’d been on the surface, putting on the leather choker. Brown hair, gold eyes, it was closer to her actual appearance than other glamours she used, but she didn’t have the resources to make another right now with the turtles ruining another two heists. Using the same glamour twice was risky, but she had to sell the others for rent and this is the last one she had left.

She ignored the shakiness of her hands, closing her eyes and inhaling slowly. She opened her eyes, looking at her hands.

“Still as a statue,” she muttered. “Still as a statue.” She fell into the familiar pose, looking at her hands as she sat like a gargoyle. Eventually, the ache in her stomach subsided from her immediate attention and the shake in her hands with it. She leaned out of the pose, arching her back and stretching like a cat.

Astraia set her sights to the sight of New York above her. “Someone’s gotta be selling hot dogs. Pick up one of those and let’s get to work.”

* * *

It was a big, fancy human party. His brothers were confused as to why Donnie insisted on staking it out, but he’d figured out a pattern for that cat burglar. Or, at least, a hypothesis of a pattern. She hit material goods, gems and jewelry. She was never out to physically hurt anybody, that seemed to be a situational tactic if something got in her way and couldn’t be ditched or talked into letting her go.

“Soooo.” Donnie kept his goggles focused on the party, but he figured Mikey didn’t mind that. “You spot her yet?”

“Not yet,” Donnie replied, keeping his goggles zoomed out for a larger search radius. “She gives off a unique energy signal, so she shouldn’t be that hard to spot.”

“Uh huh,” Mikey replied. “And why this party?”

“Owner talked a big game of having this cat necklace from Victorian London,” Donnie answered. “She likes going after cat related stuff.”

“Huh,” Mikey replied. “Is it purple?”

“Yeah, made from silver and amethyst. Why?”

Mikey leaned over, taking Donnie’s face and nudging him away from the party. Watching him with a smug smile was the cat burglar, sitting on the edge of the roof a few blocks away from him and twirling the necklace around her finger like a toy. She wiggled her fingers in a wave, mouthing a few taunts his way.

“Did she just call you slow and cute?” Mikey asked.

“The specific words don’t actually matter, she’s just making fun of me,” Donnie grumbled, getting up and pushing his goggles up. “Like usual.”

Mikey leapt to his feet, shouting at her. “HEY! NOBODY GETS TO MAKE FUN OF MY BROTHER BUT ME!”

Donnie snorted. “Thanks Mikey.”

Mikey gave him a one-armed hug. “Anytime! Let’s go get her.”

The two of them gave chase across the rooftops. Every time they got close, she’d speed up just enough to evade them. Block after block, this pattern kept up. It was odd that Donnie and Mikey were being kept at an almost consistent 15-20 feet behind her- wait.

“Mikey, you’re faster,” he shouted. “Split up from me and try to cut her off.”

“You gotcha!” Mikey dipped off into some side alleys down below, probably to try to catch her from under her.

Donnie set his focus back on the cat burglar, zipping forwards with his battleshell. She stopped using whatever tricks she was using to keep ahead of him, letting him catch up. The cat burglar looked up at him, grinning.

“Oh? Where’s the brother?” She asked, as if she didn’t know.

Donnie rolled his eyes. “Drop the act and gimme the necklace.”

“Mmmmm...no,” she replied, stopping on a dime. Her gold eyes were focused on him as he spun to a stop on her other side, grin still on her face. “Don’t you know that I only wanna dance with you, Don?”

“I’m getting that impression,” Donnie replied, taking out his bo staff. His eyes widened a hair as claws sprang from her gloved fingers after she flicked her wrists. “You take the cat thing very seriously, don’t you?”

“Purrrrfectly serious about it,” she replied. She settled into a defensive stance, motioning him to come foreword. “Think you can take me on all by yourself, hotshot?”

“I can manage,” he replied. He touched down on the roof in front of her, swiping horizontally with his staff.

She swung under it, humming. “Careful, I’ve got cat scratch fever.” She swiped with her claws, but he blocked her with the staff.

“It’s fine,” Donnie drawled, “I’ve got all my shots.”

Her eyes lit up. “In that case,” she purred, “you won’t mind if I bite.”

“I’d rather we keep a professional distance,” Donnie replied, poking her backwards with his staff.

“Should’ve known,” the cat burglar replied, swatting his staff aside and taking a step towards him. “Big genius, keeps everyone but his brothers at a distance. What’s a girl to do?”

“Give up quietly and change career paths?” Donnie asked with a drawl, raising his eyebrows at her. He saw a flash of orange behind her.

She laughed, her Cheshire Cat grin never leaving her face. “Never any fun, Don.”

“I’m plenty of fun, you just keep bursting in on the wrong contexts,” Donnie replied. “Mikey, be my character witness. Am I fun?”

The cat burglar’s eyes widened as she got wrapped up in Mikey’s kusari-fundo, teeth bared as she struggled against it.

“You’re hella fun, Don,” Mikey laughed, holding her still. “Hey you get her name at all?”

“Wasn’t exactly looking for that, no,” Donnie replied.

“Never liked labels,” the cat burglar said. “They slow me down.”

“Well you need that, so...Tiger-Eye,” Mikey replied. He looked to Donnie. “Because she’s all catty and the color scheme works for the stone?”

Donnie shrugged. “Sure.”

“I don’t get a say in this?” Tiger-Eye grumbled. “At all?”

“Nope,” Mikey replied. “That’s whatcha get for not having a name picked beforehand, Tiger-Eye. Now, where’s that necklace.” Mikey handed Donnie the handle of the kusari-fundo, looking through Tiger-Eye’s pockets.

“You won’t find it,” Tiger-Eye sung, smirking at Donnie. “I need a win.”

“Why?” Donnie asked, leaning against his bo staff and raising his eyebrows at her. “Why do you do this, like, at all?”

“Sometimes, people need some currency to exchange for goods and services. They get this currency via a job.” Tiger-Eye shrugged. “This is my job.”

“And there was nothing else you could do?” Donnie asked. “All the positions for chatty catty taken up?”

Tiger-Eye narrowed her eyes at him. She spat, “I don’t have to explain myself to you-” She stopped abruptly as a loud growl came from her stomach. Her cheeks tinted pink and she turned and glared up at the sky.

Mikey paused and Donnie could hear the gears turning in his brother’s head. “Do you steal stuff so you can eat?”

“So I can _live_ ,” Tiger-Eye growled. “Food, rent, utilities—it all adds up.”

Mikey looked at Donnie and Donnie groaned. “Mikey. Mikey, whatever you’re thinking-”

“How long would the necklace help you out for?” Mikey asked, looking back over to Tiger-Eye.

Tiger-Eye slowly looked at him, raising an eyebrow and stopping her struggle against the kusari-fundo’s rope. “Couple weeks.”

“Seriously?” Mikey asked. “But that necklace looked _expensive._ Donnie, that necklace was really expensive, right?”

“Given its craftsmanship, its materials, and its supposed historical importance? Expensive’s a good adjective for it, yeah,” Donnie answered, his eyebrows slowly lowering. “Probably worth more money than April would see in a year.”

“The world’s stacked against girls just tryin’ to get by,” Tiger-Eye replied. “I mean, it made you guys and y’all make my life _real_ difficult.”

Mikey winced. “Sorry.”

“It’s just natural order,” Tiger-Eye replied, shrugging. “Heroes versus villains, right? Black and white conflict.”

Mikey looked over to Donnie and Donnie exhaled roughly. “Okay, here’s the deal,” Donnie replied. “We get you a pizza and somewhere to stay for a couple weeks and you give us the necklace. You get what you want, we get what we want. Does that sound fair to you?”

Tiger-Eye looked at him with narrowed eyes, shifting her stare from him to Mikey then back to him. She looked up at the sky, biting her lip. “Okay. My boss for this job is gonna be pissed, but whatever. They’re underpaying me anyway. Untie me and you’ll get the necklace.”

Mikey started to untie her. Donnie watched her closely, ready to spring if she made a move to run, but she didn’t. She reached into one of her boots and brought out the necklace, holding it out to Donnie. He took it, throwing on his goggles to examine it. Looked like the real deal. He pocketed it, flipping his goggles back and looking at her.

Tiger-Eye smiled at him. “I like the Meat Lover’s pizza.”

“That’s a surprise,” Donnie drawled, “I figured you for anchovy pizza because you take the cat thing pawfully serious.”

Her eyes lit up again and her smile shifted to a grin. “I’ve gotta keep you on your toes somehow, hero.”

* * *

They ended up setting her with April for a couple weeks. According to April, it was like nothing changed: Tiger-Eye barely touched anything in the fridge (no more than them, honestly) and was only sometimes at the house when she was. The O’Neils never spotted her entering and leaving, which Donnie had expected. If Donnie hadn’t been looking over the place with a critical eye, he’d never guess that she was staying there.

But little things were different: the dishes were done at a faster rate, April’s room was cleaner, and when Donnie gave April’s computer its weekly checkups, he noticed a big change. There was a mark on the hard drive that was done in gold, looking like a stylized bolt of lightning. Donnie had no idea what it did until there was a city-wide blackout and April still had access to the Internet and everything on her computer, even when it was unplugged.

“What did you do to get her to do this?” Donnie asked, gesturing at the computer in the dark room.

April shrugged. “She asked to read my textbooks and I let her. Acted like I was giving her gold when I handed her my English textbook, her eyes got all big like a cat on catnip.”

“Huh. Weird,” Donnie replied. “Can I take a look?”

“Sure, she bookmarked all the stuff that she liked,” April answered, finding the big textbook and handing it to Donnie. “Seriously, Don, it was like watching Leo on pixie sticks.”

“Still wanna put down for the record that sugar doesn’t work like that,” Donnie muttered, opening the textbook to the first...feather? He picked it up, examining it. It was light and flexible as a normal feather, but...it looked like stone. He pulled on his goggles, scanning it. Yup. It was made out of a black marble, by its material makeup. But marble didn’t flex like this. It was _impossible._ He put the feather back, reading around it. He flicked on a flashlight in his pack, quickly skimming the words.

“It’s a love story,” he replied, looking up at April.

April nodded. “I’m pretty sure they all are. That or poetry about love.”

“Never would’ve pegged her for a hopeless romantic,” Donnie replied, gently closing the textbook and handing it back to April. “Wonder if we can use that in the future to get her to stop stealing stuff. Get Leo to flirt with her or something.” At April’s snort, he raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Dude, Donnie, you’re smart, but oblivious,” April replied, smirking as she wiggled her eyebrows at Donnie. “She’s not gonna have eyes for Leo when she already has a big _thing_ for you.”

“Okay, she only keeps that up to mess with me,” Donnie replied, shrugging his shoulders. “She’s all ‘I only wanna dance with you’ and focuses on me to mess with me and hence, mess with my brothers since the big advantage we have over her in fights is our numbers. She takes me out, she’s got less of that to deal with.” He paused, tilting his head. “Plus, I’m the only one capable of tracking her. It’s definitely not personal.”

April snorted, smirking. “Uh huh. You know how you gave me those notes to help me out in geometry?”

“Yeah? Are they helping?” Donnie asked. “They should be, made them pretty neat cheat-sheets-”

“Tiger-Eye found them on my desk and I found her giggling over the fact that of _course_ you write in purple,” April answered. “Like it was super endearing, she makes these weird purring noises in between giggles. When she finally noticed that I was in the room, she stopped on a dime, bright red, and stuttered something about straightening up the room a little.” April snorted. “It’s definitely not personal though.”

“I...I don’t know how to react to that,” Donnie replied, blinking. “Maybe it was an act?”

“Maybe, I don’t know her well enough to gauge that,” April replied, “but I do know that even if it was an act, it shows that I’m right. She’s got a thing for you.”

“Who has a thing for Don?”

April jumped and Donnie spun around. Tiger-Eye stood, hands folded behind her back looking so innocent that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. It was weird for Donnie, seeing her in something other than the catsuit she used for “work”, but the gold gym shorts and black cat-themed tank top were definitely a part of a fashion sense that he’d expect from her.

Donnie opened his mouth to reply, but April beat him to it. “A classmate,” April replied. “You know the one I was complaining about, the one that sees handwriting as a prophecy tool?”

Tiger-Eye rolled her eyes. “Ugh. That one. Divination’s much more complicated than simple handwriting analysis. Even if she was a trained divination specialist, at her age she should only see a few minutes into the future, not someone’s romance fortune.”

“I know, but she’s seen Donnie’s handwriting and thinks that makes them soulmates and I’ve been keepin’ her out of my hair, but you know how pushy she gets.”

“A charlatan and a fraud,” Tiger-Eye grumbled, crossing her arms. “Honestly, I could do a better read than her, any day of the week.”

“Read on what?” Donnie asked. “What exactly _are_ your capabilities?”

Her eyes lit up. Donnie tried not to blink at that. She did that a lot, light up at things people said. It wasn’t just him. Couldn’t be. “That wouldn’t be any fun,” Tiger-Eye purred, stepping forward and sticking her tongue out at him. “Just _telling_ you. Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t guessed by now, Donatello. You’re the smart one.”

Donnie huffed. “You’ve got magic that’s gotta do with information and seeing more than other people,” Donnie replied and a grin flicked across Tiger-Eye’s face. “That stuff you pull naturally all the time. You draw things on other things when you’re doing something from what I presume is another wheelhouse, like the thing you did to April’s computer.”

“For someone who’s not trained, those aren’t bad observations,” Tiger-Eye replied, keeping strong eye contact with him. “The information and seeing more than other people is Divination magic.” She bounced on her toes a little, gesturing to herself. “It’s my natural specialty. Divination’s all about magic information-gathering, which includes seeing into the future. I don’t use the future-seeing parts of it, as it’s not only cheating, but it uses a lot of power and draws far too much attention from the wrong people. But little readings wouldn’t do much.”

Donnie was forcing himself to stand still, focused on her. “So that’s Divination. What’d you do to April’s computer?”

Tiger-Eye answered without hesitation, gesturing animatedly. Usually she was all slow, elegant movements, like a smug cat, but this was something that brought out something else in her. “What I did to April’s computer was a hybrid Evocation-Divination rune. Keeps it powered with the Evocation half while the Divination half works as a direct uplink to the Internet.” She looked over to April, preening. “Doesn’t even need wifi anymore. Direct Internet uplink. Took some of my unicorn horn powder, but it’s fine. Should hold up for the next five years, with good maintenance. With Donnie-level maintenance, I’d give it another five on top of that.”

“Holy crap, girl.” April blinked. “Donnie, she’s a keeper. We gotta keep her, like, forever.”

“I’m working on it,” Donnie replied, pausing as he watched her eyes widen and lips part. That was an odd reaction, wasn’t expecting that, was she? “She’s gotta stop stealing and settle somewhere at some point.”

Tiger-Eye blinked at April, then him. It was kind of funny: with a couple of sentences, the outward confidence shattered into her jaw dropping, a large blush erupting on her face. She shook her head, looking between the two of them with wide eyes. She quickly recovered, settling into her usual teasing stance with squared shoulders and her hands settling behind her back. She purred, “Looking to domesticate me, Donnie?”

“More like collar you,” Donnie answered, raising an eyebrow at her.

Tiger-Eye’s blush worsened as April elbowed Donnie’s elbow with a snort.


	3. A Proposal

The surface world was a point of key interest and untapped wealth. Astraia knew that better than anyone, having quietly stolen anything from food to valuables up there. Glamours were one of the first non-Divination enchantments that she mastered and it wasn’t hard to take any appearance she wanted. It wasn’t often that she settled on an appearance for any amount of time, but since her brief stay with April O’Neil, she wanted to be recognizable by those turtles. (After the agreed upon time was up, she took to the rooftops of the Below and perched for hours, replaying the past in her head—“Donnie, she’s a keeper. We gotta keep her, like, forever.” “I’m working on it.” She didn’t know how to feel about that exchange. It haunted her for weeks after, especially the part about being collared.)

The downside to being recognizable is that other mutants on the surface—those who figured out the liminal spaces, the storefronts maintained by those from Below, the neighborhoods maintained by the Council to make Draxuum’s mutants accept their transition from normal human to what they’d consider a cryptid—were starting to recognize her. There were rumors about her being a mutated cat or a human mutated into a cat and she didn’t correct them. Playing teacher for them about what magical creatures wasn’t on her priority list. Let them think she was one of them. It opened some doors that she wanted into, such as information and tips.

It also left her open to less...pleasant things.

She stirred her water, finding the ice more interesting than the other person at the table.

“Everyone knows you have an interest in them,” the worm replied. “Perhaps we could team up, take them out together.”

She narrowed her golden eyes at him, letting her real, pinpoint pupils through the glamour to emphasize her distaste. “And what makes you think that I would want to work with you?”

“You’re the new thief on the block, Tiger-Eye,” he replied and she bit her tongue to stop herself from rolling her eyes at the name and the assumption. The worm continued, “And those turtles have interfered with your work quite a fair bit, haven’t they?”

“Only three times during jobs,” she answered, shrugging. “They usually arrive after I’m done.”

“They caused you to lose the Eye of Sekhmet,” he replied.

Astraia moved her glass away from her a touch too quickly. “That they did. What of it?”

“Don’t you want _revenge?”_ the worm asked, eyes wide and arms outstretched. “I know I want revenge for all the times that they humiliated _me_ . With your grace, agility, and combat-skills and my insider knowledge on those turtles, we could _crush_ them once and for all! Sure, a few people will got hurt in the crossfire, but it’ll be newsworthy! It’ll make history books!”

Astraia raised her eyebrows, moving her hair out of her face. “And your name is?”

“Warren Stone,” he grumbled, pupils narrowing.

She put on an easy smile. “I knew I recognized you from somewhere.” She offered him a finger. “You have yourself a deal, Mr. Stone. Please, tell me _everything_ you know about those terrible turtles.”

* * *

Donnie was working on something in the lab when his computer started to beep. He walked over, eyebrows furrowed. The beeping stopped once he was looking at the screen and something opened his word processor. He attempted to close it, but nothing worked: his computer was possessed.

“I liked this computer,” he grumbled. “How the shell did it get a virus?”

In the word processor, something replied, _“Aw, you should call me that more often, Donatello.”_

“Yeah, I’mma blow this up now,” Donnie replied. He reached down to unplug it, but he got zapped by a yellow light. He blinked, looking back at the screen to see more words.

_“That’s not necessary, Donatello. This is just temporary,”_ read the screen. _“I’ve a warning. Avoid Giorgio’s Pizzas for a while. I’d rather you not be distracted by food poisoning during our next playdate.”_

He groaned, facepalming. “Tiger-Eye.”

_“So slow, Donatello.”_ She used an emoticon for her winking and sticking her tongue out at him and he grumbled.

“How do you know my full name now, anyway? Stalking me?”

There was a pause and then the words slowly filled in. _“Hardly. Our spats got me some unwanted attention by one Warren Stone. Worm mutant, claims to be your greatest nemesis? I was so hurt hearing that, I thought we had something special.”_

“The only special thing we have is a tendency to end up fighting each other,” Donatello replied, rolling his eyes. “Digital, physical, you try to claw my eyes out and I stop you. Honestly, I’m pretty sure you’re just messing with me now.”

_“Now I’m really hurt, Don,”_ she replied. _“I’ve never lied to you. Ever. Stone claimed he wanted revenge and he was annoyingly insistent in teaming up with me. I just used the opportunity to learn what I could while swapping his poison with a little something to give some people food poisoning instead.”_

“Wait, what kind of poison was this guy gonna use?”

_“Got his hands on manticore poison. Nasty stuff, painful excruciating death. Had enough for a hundred pizzas, just to be sure he’d catch you and your brothers in the poison net. I swiped it from him and sold it back into the black market. Used that money to grab an antidote just in case he tries this again without me, since y’know. The pixie pollen I swapped it with doesn’t kill people.”_ There was a pause. _“Kind of tempted to give you the antidote. You’re the hero, not me.”_

“I mean, with skills like yours, you _could_ be,” Donnie replied. “Just sayin’.”

There was a much longer pause. Donnie almost thought she was gone, having cut whatever connection she had up. But then her words were back. _“Doesn’t pay as well, but nice shot, hotshot.”_

“Had to try, I dream of a day where you’re not hacking through my defenses,” Donatello drawled, pulling his project closer to his computer. “By the by, since you’re playing nice, how’re you getting in this time?”

There was another pause, but he saw her clicking things to change her font to something with more serifs and the color to something more gold. He rolled his eyes. Melodramatic as always. _“You have an overreliance on Bluetooth technology, Donnie.”_

“Yeah, but I made a huge patch to try to fix that hole since the last time you prowled through it,” he replied. “So, what did I miss?”

_“There’s some things tech can’t protect you from,”_ Tiger-Eye replied. _“Like magic.”_ How dare she throw sparkle emojis in like that.

He snapped his fingers. “Ugh! Always cheating.”

_“Naturally.”_

He stuck out his tongue. “That how you can hear me too?”

_“No, you just left your audio log on. Dork. Do you always record your lab stays with Stardates and made up numbers?”_

“I’ll have you know that it’s a very complex system- wait. Wait have you been listening to my audio logs?”

_“I have better things to do, so no. I only heard you during this most recent one while I was setting up. Fascinating project, by the way. I can’t wait to wreck the first prototype.”_

Donnie rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but then I’ll rebuild it, better than ever.”

_“Naturally. And then I’ll wreck it again and you’ll improve, as always.”_

Donnie snorted. “The natural order of things, huh?”

_“The natural order of us, it seems.”_

Donnie hummed for a moment, grabbing water since his mouth felt dry. He rolled an idea around in his head as he paused in his work. “Morbid curiosity, but if I wanted your help on something, what would it cost me?”

There was a very long pause. He gave the screen his full attention, raising his eyebrows as he saw letters of a whole different language appear on screen in what he could only guess was a keyboard smash (the rhythm the letters appeared in and the quick backspace and deleting of combinations before he could try to analyze them).

“I’m gonna assume that that’s you laughing at the idea,” Donnie replied. “S’fine, just wanted to explore options during a rare moment of you playing nice-”

_“I’d just require food and lodging while my assistance is required.”_

Donnie blinked. “Oh. That’s it?”

_“That’s what I use monetary gains from my jobs on anyway, so, yes, that’s it.”_

“Because if you want money, I’ve got money,” Donnie replied. He smirked, drawling, “I can make it rain copper and even throw in silver to spice up the price.”

_“If your price tag involved money, I’d let you know, Donatello. As it stands, if it did, you’d be far too poor to afford me.”_

“Ouch, seriously?”

_“I’m a luxury that few can afford.”_

Donnie smirked. “Apparently, I can afford you with a spare room and pizza.”

_“That’s because you’re my favorite plaything, don’t let it get to your ego.”_

He made an engine whirring noise with his mouth before drawling, “Too late, ego.exe is already running at full capacity and you just fed it a lot more input data to make its output larger.”

_“You’re so lucky that you’re cute or else I’d hex you for that.”_

“I’m sure you’ll just scratch my shell for it later-” Donnie paused, blinking at the monitor for a few moments and almost dropping his tools. “Wait. Wait, did you just call me cute?”

His computer monitor turned bright gold and he shut his eyes from the brightness. It made a high pitched whirring sound with the telltale signs that it was overclocking itself. He opened his eyes when the light level went down, finding his computer smoking a weird gold-tinted smoke and turned off. He yelped, scrambling to open it up and try to save it.

Donatello blinked when he opened it up and found it looking pristine. More so than usual. The only difference was the familiar rune on his hard-drive, the cat’s eye looking up at him. He slowly closed his computer up and tried to boot it up. It turned on faster than he could blink and a quick glance told him all of his files were fine. Including the text file that Tiger-Eye had been typing into.

Added onto the bottom was: _“Scared you, didn’t I? You deserved it. Gave you a contact rune for me for whenever you want to talk about this little job of yours. Abuse it and I’ll hex you into next month.”_

He snorted, chuckling, “So mean, but you can’t hide the fact you called me cute.” He paused, humming. “Maybe what April said has some merit.”


	4. A Much Needed Nap

It’d been too quiet. Astraia didn’t like that. It’d been multiple jobs since her talk with Donatello and her “failed dealing” with the worm (he’d been so cross with that merchant. Wouldn’t blame her, the little idiot, now making enemies with people he really shouldn’t). She’d been able to save a lot of money from taking back magical artifacts from human museums and actually had a surplus of money for once. But something didn’t feel right with her and it wasn’t the normal anxiety (she actually had money for once. It was probably going to be taken away. Again) she had after a lot of success.

Astraia found herself by the O’Neil’s house, perched up above as the night traffic went around. She spotted April coming out of the house and followed her for a good two blocks before going down to the streets.

“April!” Astraia waved.

April spun around, eyes widening. “Tiger! Yes! You’re just the person!”

Astraia blinked as April walked over to her, the shorter girl wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Do...do you need something stolen?”

“Nah, it’s a magic problem. I think,” April answered, brows furrowing as she said “I think”. It melted pretty quickly as she smiled at Astraia. “Besides, you’re more than just a thief, girl.”

“It’s my primary profession, magic advisor isn’t something people come to me for,” Astraia replied, resisting the urge to bite her lip. She hummed, tilting her head. “Tell me about the problem. My price is a pizza.”

April hummed. “You drive a hard bargain but I’ve got literally no other options.”

“Well, there’s Clem’s if you know the password, which he always says in greeting because he likes messing with people. If you don’t mind paying an arm and a leg, there’s Cosby’s on Fifth street, but they mostly do fashion enchantments.”

“Yeah, but you’re like. Right here.” April tapped Astraia’s shoulder.

“The problem, April.” Astraia was fighting back a smile.

April snapped her fingers and started walking with Astraia, guiding her somewhere. “Right! Okay, so like, the boys went out one night and Donnie came back all...weird. Raph shrugged it off as him being grumpy about there being a copycat of you-”

Astraia licked her teeth, scrunching her nose.

“-but then he started writing...poetry?” April asked. “Which is. So out of character that we considered that maybe he got body-swapped? But he can answer questions that only OG Donnie can, so brainwashed? Mikey remembered the thief did some magic hand gesture-y type things that you do sometimes? Is there like...magic that can do that?”

“Unfortunately,” Astraia answered, managing to scrunch her nose further as she narrowed her eyes. “Enchantment magic. Distasteful, cheating, awful.” She blinked. “Wait. What do we know of the copycat?”

“She like. Wore brown leather where you go black? Seemed to have the cat theme, but wasn’t like. Jokey with it like you are?” April replied. “Wait, why, do you know her?”

“She’s, unfortunately, my replacement,” Astraia replied. “You could call her a sister, but I’d rather not have the familial attachment. I wouldn’t be surprised if Donnie was targeted-” Astraia paused. “Okay. No price. I’m doing this for _free_. Where is Donnie?”

“I’ll show you, the boys got him quarantined.” April pulled her along. She paused. “Wait. You aren’t gonna abuse knowing where they live, right?”

“April O’Neil, I’ve known where their base is since the first confrontation,” Astraia replied. “I literally followed them there. I started stealing things _closer_ to their home. That’s the only thing I’ve done with the knowledge.”

“Huh.” April looked at Astraia over her glasses. _“Why?”_

“I like fighting Donnie,” Astraia answered as they settled into a walk, words bubbling out of her like a soda can that’d been shaken too much. “He’s fun to poke and prod and he plays along with the banter. Don’t come across that often. That and he’s practically a _unicorn_ in how rare people like him are: almost zero magical aptitude. His brothers, from a light look? Mikey’s a spike of illusory magic, Leo’s all conjuration though that might be the attunement he’s got with that sword, and Raph’s got a pinch of abjuration.”

Astraia gestured sharply as she spoke, the sun metaphorically coming out. April listened with big eyes, sometimes gently pushing and pulling Astraia so she wouldn’t walk into a person or a trash can or a wall. “Donnie? Same level of magical aptitude as a normal door knob you’d find in a mundane home goods store. If he was in the Below, he’d be treated as a second class citizen. But he can keep up with me, give me a challenge, when I’m a _highly_ talented divination mage.”

She smiled, putting a finger to the corner of her mouth and dragging it down to under her chin in a smug motion. April snorted, rolling her eyes.

“I can know his whole kit beforehand and he _still_ surprises me,” Astraia replied, looking up at the rooftops and smiling. “He makes me be better by being so intelligent and talented. If I can surprise him, I can surprise damn near anyone.”

April hummed, smiling softly. “And you don’t have a thing for him? At all?”

“I am still going to deny every one of those accusations,” Astraia replied, her gaze snapping back to April. She narrowed her eyes at April with a dust of pink on her glamour’s cheeks. “Professional distance. I have professional admiration of him.”

“Uh huh,” April replied, smiling so big that the corners of her eyes crinkled a bit. “Don’t believe it. For even a second.”

As they reached the right sewer entrance (the closest one to their lair, at least. Which made sense—April couldn’t travel in the dark like Astraia and the turtles could, so closest one meant a shorter route in the dark to memorize), Astraia lifted up the manhole cover and April whistled.

“I’m usually here for a couple minutes moving that thing,” April replied. “Do you work out a bunch for that sort of shit?”

Astraia blinked. “Disregarding the fact that I do feats of acrobatic and athletic prowess on a regular basis as part of my work? I think most of what I’m capable of is easily explainable by the fact that I’m not human.”

“Wait. You’re not?” April asked as Astraia nimbly climbed the ladder.

Astraia replied, waiting at the bottom with a smirk on her face, “No, I’m very much not.”

“Hey, don’t deadpan at me, you look it! Like that Baron guy was like a creepy satyr thing with like. Talking shoulder pads.” April climbed down the ladder, putting her hands on her hips. “You look like a well dressed white girl from the private school down the block.”

“I’m going to guess that you met a Yokai. I’m not one myself, though methods of concealment between the Yokai and my methods are the same. Like the Yokai up here, I use magic to look like this,” Astraia replied, gesturing at herself while taking a wand off of her belt. To April, it probably looked like it appeared out of nowhere since the belt didn’t exist on her glamour. She used the wand to put the manhole cover back, then conjured a small orb of light. “I’m actually a bit of a hideous monster.”

“Are we talking Shape of Water hideous or gelatinous blob hideous?” April replied, starting to walk.

“Humanoid, not a blob, though there is a nice family of blobs on the floor below me in my apartment complex.” Astraia struggled to keep her tone casual as April’s eyes widened. “April, your best friends are giant walking turtles. The existence of sentient gelatinous blobs _surprises_ you?”

“I mean, yeah!” April answered. “They’re one thing. You’re just casually listing shit off like it’s no big deal.”

“We try to keep you unaware since it makes things easier,” Astraia replied, “but like. I figured you were chill with the boys, Donnie’s ridiculously futuristic gadgets, and the charm I put on your computer so eh? Figured it was fine. I mean, you literally asked me down here for magic stuff.”

“Okay, so like. What _are_ you?” April asked. “You’re not human, are you a mutant?”

“Nope,” Astraia answered, popping the p. “That’s the more popular guess.” She sighed melodramatically. “Everybody just asks what I am, but not _how_ I am.”

“Okay, Tiger-Eye.” A familiar voice. Mikey, Astraia’s mind supplied as the familiar feeling of a kusari-fundo’s cord wrapped around her. She didn’t struggle, rolling her eyes as she let herself be pulled back. “How are you?”

“Mostly pleasant, will be better once you stop restraining me, Mikey,” Astraia replied, “I’ve been told Donnie might’ve been hit with something and I’m here to do some volunteer-work.”

“Wait.” Mikey looked back and forth from Astraia to April. “Did you talk her into helping Donnie for _free?”_ Mikey gave Astraia a partly concerned, partly skeptical look.

“I mean, yeah,” April replied. “After I told her the details, she lowered her price from a pizza to _free.”_

“No one should mess with Donnie magically but me,” Astraia replied. “Besides, I’m fairly certain it was my sister targeting Donnie because of me, so...my fault, my mess, my fix. I’m good on the money at the moment, so...why not?”

“Wait, you have a _sister?”_ Mikey asked, slowly undoing the kusari-fundo.

Astraia shrugged. “As much as you can call the Venus de Milo and the Aphrodite of Knidos siblings.” She sighed. “Look. Can we get all the non-Donatello brothers gathered? I only want to say this explanation once. I get enough harassment about what I am as it is, I’d rather get it over with sooner rather than later. I’ll...I’ll tell Donnie when he’s in his right mind.”

He slowly freed her. She could practically hear his mind whirring, which had to be a brotherly trait he shared with Donatello. “Okay, I’ll just get the others and meet you out here-”

“Michelangelo,” Astraia replied, “I already know where all of you live.” To prove her point, she walked past him and took the two left turns and the right to finish getting to the lair. She heard April and Mikey scramble to keep up with her.

She folded her hands behind her, closing her eyes and repeating her mantra in her mind. _Still as a statue._ They didn’t have the cultural background to treat her differently. It’d be fine. They’d probably still treat her the same. Why was she even worried? Sure, fighting them brightened up her day. Even if Donnie wasn’t present to tease and toy with, Raph was fun to climb and clamber around, Leonardo was always fun to pun at and with, Mikey could easily challenge Donnie in terms of challenging her with creative solutions to the problem she was, and April was just...sweet. She couldn’t bring herself to fight April, even if April was an easy hostage target. After she cheerfully let Astraia borrow a space on her floor, let her into her life, even if it was just griping about school work and work, Astraia just. Couldn’t. The whole stay was simply a favor for Donnie, nothing personal with Astraia personally, but maybe they were friends? She didn’t have enough information to be able to tell.

She kept an awareness of her surroundings, hearing voices go back and forth in bursts of shouts and shuffling. She could tell people came close to touching her, but were repelled by something. Astraia opened her eyes, finding the three turtle brothers in a state of comedic disarray and April standing in between them and Astraia. Astraia found herself smiling at the display.

“Good,” Astraia replied quietly. “I only get to do this twice rather than five times.”

She plucked the choker off of herself and the light tingle of a glamour being removed went away. She stood at her full height, same as her glamour had been, of five foot five. She was literally statuesque, built out of black marble. She had an artistically “perfect” face, something more of a Renaissance masterpiece than anything that could grow organically. It was uncanny at a longer examination, but she was certain that was on purpose. She was supposed to be pretty for a short look. She was sculpted into short chiton, the white marble of it moving like fabric. Her tool belt stood out against it like a pair of sandals over a pair of socks, offsetting the ethereal beauty her creator went for with her creation with its mundanity. Wings were folded against her back, black marble feathers folded neatly. Her feet ended in cat-like paws, showing lightly from her chiton with a hint of a tail. Her arms ended in human-like hands, with fingers that were too clever for what she had been made for. Her eyes glowed a soft gold, though her right eye had a soft crack. Astraia knew that a closer examination would show that she had lots and lots of small, subtle cracks about her face.

The four members of her audience gaped. There was an amusing simultaneous jaw drop, all of them matching like the siblings they were (she had no doubt that if Donnie were here, that would have been his first reaction, but he would’ve been quicker to recover than the rest then he’d launch into question after question). She gave them a moment, blinking slowly as she made herself stand as still as the statue she was.

April recovered first, squealing softly. “Tiger, you’re so pretty-”

“Astraia,” she replied, chomping at the bit to get this over with. Rip off the bandaid. “You’re seeing my face, you get my name. I’m a sphinx. What do you know about them?”

“Big Egyptian statue and weird riddle guy,” April replied slowly. “You don’t look like either of them.”

Astraia gave a half chuckle. “No. I’m a sphinx in being a living image. Living stone. Made to be of service. I’m the magical equivalent of a mix between a maid and a sugarspun rose: pretty symbol of status. Got real tired of that, real quick. My maker messed up: was so caught up in trying to prove his theory on golem creation right that he made me too sentient. I started making choices and it was funny to him, for a time. But then I scratched a dinner guest and well.” She chuckled, the corners of her eyes crinkling sardonically. “Nobody believes the sphinx when the sphinx says that a dinner guest was rude.”

“So the chick who did the weird shit to Donnie,” Leo said slowly, “was your replacement?”

“I’m pretty sure of that, by the description April gave me,” Astraia replied. “So. Where is the little shit?”

“Uh, we don’t know-”

“Not the replacement,” Astraia replied, holding up a hand. “Donnie. I can go scratch up my sister later, though I imagine I’d be fifth in line to do so.”

“Damn straight,” April replied, crossing her arms. She looked at the three turtles. “C’mon. She knows magic stuff and you guys have been hiding this from your dad. We’re all lucky that he’s in one of his death naps.”

Raph sighed. He looked at Astraia. “You’re gonna put him back?”

“Exactly as he was,” Astraia promised. “Swear on the Styx, I like him that way.”

“Okay,” Raph replied. He settled into a facial expression that Astraia liked to call his leader face: hardened his features in an action hero way, eyes always giving him away. “Leo, keep an eye on her. Mikey, you’re on standby with me. April, you need the card to get little miss kitten her payment?”

“She’s doing this for free,” April replied at the same time as Astraia said, “I’m doing this for free.”

Raph blinked, looking back at Astraia. “Sooooo...the flirting isn’t all bluster, huh?” he replied, amused smirk flicking onto his face.

Astraia rolled her eyes, putting back on her glamour. “If one of you accuses me of such a thing again,” she replied, “I will hex the one responsible. Make everything taste like lime yogurt.” She looked to Leonardo as she ignored April’s snort, Mikey’s giggle, and Raph’s huff, watching Leo watch her with a critical eye. She recognized the look: he did that when trying to read her in a fight. She put down some of her bluster, letting some of her concern show in her voice and lowered guard. “Well? Let’s go see him.”

Leo tilted his head for a second before neatly shrugging. “You gotcha, doc.” He put his sword over his shoulder, the action casual and almost absent minded, but Astraia knew a warning when she saw one. She followed him down a tunnel-turned-hallway, hearing the soft noise of a keyboard clattering away and smiled softly. Even under a spell of some sort, Donnie _would_ make himself busy.

She saw a pile of assorted things at a makeshift door, from where she could hear the keyboard clatter the loudest. She raised an eyebrow at Leonardo and he shrugged.

“Locks stopped working,” he replied. “Taught himself how to lockpick. We had to improvise or he was gonna go out looking for her.”

“For who?” she asked quietly. Astraia swore if Anatola put a love charm on Donatello, she was going to break her sister into so many pieces that she’d never be found. Scatter her dust to the winds.

“Dunno, he wouldn’t say,” he muttered. “We were worried, so...” He gestured at the pile, as if that was the right solution. “He stopped bothering with it. I pop in and out with food and water and stuff.”

“Well, let’s go, I’m now stuff,” she replied, gesturing at the pile and the door beyond.

Leonardo shrugged. “Fair enough.” He cut a portal into the air with his sword, grabbed her, and popped through it.

Astraia was certain that she could have never been ready for what was on the other side of the portal. On the surface level, it looked fine: Donnie struck her as the type to have cork boards everywhere with little pins in them and large blueprints and maps everywhere in a system that only made sense to him (purposefully making it over complicated just to make himself seem a little smarter, no doubt. She’d do the same). But the blueprints weren’t there and the maps of the city that were there had pins in them in a pattern that she could easily recognize: the city’s museums and jewelry stores. There were notes along the wall with purple chicken-scratch, nothing like any sample of Donnie’s handwriting she’d ever seen. Before she could get a closer look at it, however, Donnie noticed they were there.

“Leo! I need books,” Donnie replied, slowly turning around and tapping at the touchpad on his wrist. She noticed the arms attached to his synthetic shell holding various tablets. “I found pdfs online, but I need the right text for this research and I don’t want to get a single thing wrong-” His words dropped dead as he lifted his eyes and noticed her there. “Shit.”

“Hi-” Astraia forgot the rest of her sentence as he quickly scurried further back into the lab, where she could spot piles upon piles of books strewn about haphazardly. She blinked. This was _wrong_ . Donatello _never_ ran from her. Maybe fall into a tactical retreat to pull her into a trap or his brothers or _both_ , sure, but never straight up _fleeing_. He was hiding from her behind a sheet of semi-opaque glass, which wasn’t a real hiding place at _all_ and Donatello was smart enough to know that. Even in a moment of panic. She looked at Leonardo and he looked just as confused.

“So, definitely something wrong,” Astraia muttered to Leo.

He nodded slowly, raising an eyebrow. “That was his entirely weekly emotional outburst quota. The last time I saw him get anywhere near this amount of emotional was like. When we found some stray titanium alloy stuff. Burst into happy tears.”

“Leeeeeoooo, stop embarrassing me,” Donnie whined from the lab, shielded behind the smokey glass.

Astraia and Leo exchanged a _Look_.

Astraia muttered, “Get to Clem’s on 3rd and Gardner’s.” She took a blank piece of paper from the board closest to her, quickly writing down a list of ingredients. “Ask him for this list. Test the sprite shrapnel before you go by twirling it in the jar clockwise. If it doesn’t turn green, get Clem to get you real sprite shrapnel and not brownie bricks. Wrote all that on here in case you forget.”

“Am I gonna have to pay for all this?” Leo asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Technically, yes,” Astraia replied, “but you pay by getting the password. Password’s easy: Clem always super-emphasizes it when he greets customers. Kinda drawls it?” She hummed. “Take Mikey with you. If you don’t spot it, Mikey will, no doubt.”

“Okay,” Leo muttered. “No funny business while I’m gone.”

“Strictly professional,” she muttered, “examination okay?”

“Sure,” Leo replied. He called to his brother, “Donnie, I’m gonna leave Tiger here. Behave.”

There was a loud thump, Astraia recognizing the sound of a book being dropped in surprise. “I always behave!” Donnie called from the lab.

Astraia bit her tongue, holding herself back from quipping about his collaring comment. Wasn’t the time, he was mind-whammied too hard for that kind of teasing. Leo portaled out, leaving her there.

“So,” she drawled, keeping to her normal facade, “whatcha working on, hero?”

“Can’t say, it’s not ready yet,” Donnie answered. She could see him almost frantically going through books, seeing them open and supported by the smaller arms on his shell. “S’not ready for you yet.”

She blinked, going through the action very slowly because she was having a hard time processing the implications of that. “All these notes and everything,” she asked, “is for _me_?”

“Yeah,” he replied. She swore she heard him squeak and then promised his real self that she’d never tease him on that squeak. Respected him too much for that. “Please don’t look at any of it, Tiger-Eye.” His vocal tone made her chest ache, with its pleading lilt. “I don’t want any of it spoiled.”

Astraia was out of her element. She was so incredibly out of her element that she couldn’t stop herself from gently correcting him, “Donatello, my name’s Astraia.” She coughed, biting her lip. “I figure, you’re doing all of this for me, you...you might as well have my name.”

She saw his outline stop in its manic movements. He slowly leaned the smallest amount from his glass sanctum. “That’s...that’s a really pretty name.”

Feeling herself warm at that, she gave him a smile. “Yours isn’t half bad either, Donnie.” Astraia found a futon couch, making a big show at not looking closely at any of the chicken scratch notes (she could spot the name “Emily Dickenson” on one of the notes out of the corner of her eye) and sat down. She pat the space next to her. “C’mon. If you don’t want me snooping, you’re gonna have to distract me.”

She could see him slowly put things down and he slowly dragged himself away from whatever he was working on. Donatello sat down, keeping space between them (which she was thankful for) and looked over at her.

“So...you’re in my room and I’m pretty sure that I’m dreaming,” Donnie replied in a small gush.

Astraia raised an eyebrow slowly. She reached over to his arm and gently pinched him.

He jumped lightly, blinking at her with a grin slowly forming. “Okay. Not dreaming. Thanks for proving that hypothesis wrong,” he replied and she felt a bit of relief at hearing him snark at her. Even if it was a baby snark, more of a tease really, it told her that this probably wasn’t a full personality rewrite. Antola hadn’t gotten _that_ good yet. The real Donnie was in there somewhere underneath all of this nervous bluster.

She gave a half bow, still sitting. “I do so love to be of service,” she drawled, keeping her smile up at him. Astraia hummed softly, folding her hands in her lap. “So, if I can’t ask about that project, can I ask about the bags under your eyes? Those have got to be Gucci.”

Donatello gave a soft laugh, rubbing the skin under his eyes with his fingers. “I figured that I couldn’t go anywhere, so...just kept myself busy until they stopped being ridiculous.”

“Ah,” she replied. “Let’s make a deal, then. You take a nap, I’ll be on the lookout for them to stop being ridiculous, and I’ll wake you if they stop.”

Donnie snorted. “Looking for an excuse to snoop,” he replied, leaning back into his part of the couch.

Astraia put her hand to her mouth, eyes comically wide. “Me? Never.”

He smirked and she felt better. Okay, that was still _his_ smirk. She could tell because it made the back of her neck feel like it got lightly dusted by a small shock spell like it usually did when he smirked.

She gave a long sigh. “How’s this. You can use my lap as a pillow. If I move, you’ll wake up. Probably.” She gave him her signature kitty cat eyes and pout. “You need to sleep, Don.”

Donatello was instantly all nervous and flittery again. Yep, that was definitely wrong, Astraia decided. He never even flinched at her kitty eyes and pout before. Roll his eyes, yes. This...this was something she’d expect from Mikey. Maybe Leo. Not Donatello. It’s why he was her favorite. “Ah, um...”

“Pleeeeeassse?” She increased the degree of her pout by a hair. “I’m a little worried about you. I swear, I won’t move a muscle or look at anything.”

He looked torn, his eyes shifting between her and a space behind her. She kept her gaze on him, keeping her word. Donnie huffed quietly.

“Fine,” he grumbled, tapping at the straps on his shoulders. She blinked as his battleshell popped off and watched him put it on the floor. He laid on his stomach, putting his head on her thigh. “You okay about this?”

“Yeah,” Astraia answered, gently putting a hand on his head. “This is fine.”

Donnie snorted. “Are you being honest or referencing the meme?”

Astraia snorted herself, smirking and taking off his goggles. “Honest,” she replied, putting them on herself. She looked down at him, the whole world looking a little pinky-purple. She drawled, lightly booping him right between his nostrils, _“Sleep.”_

He rolled his eyes at her and then shut them. She did her best to relax on the couch, humming softly as she gently tinkered with the goggles and let them distract her for a bit (she wanted a pair of her own, she decided. A pair of these supplementing her own abilities, she’d be near unstoppable...or that was what she kept telling herself to ignore the truth that she just liked them because they were _his_ and her using them was a little redundant to her own magic).

Once she figured Donnie was asleep, she put the goggles up on her head. She swirled her fingers over his head in a gentle motion, like stirring a cauldron, as she silently exhaled the incantation. Gold light streamed from her fingertips and slowly formed a whirling tornado-like shape above Donnie’s head. At the wide brim of it, the spell began to create a visualization of Donnie’s mind, slowly filling the circle she was gently spinning to life. His mind was a well-organized junkyard, with the “cars” being sorted by color and by size to make impossibly satisfying geometric shapes. Astraia let herself smile at it. Of course his mind was just another place where he could scavenge for parts for his inventions. It was fortuitous too: Antola was _rubbish_ at dealing with “dirty places”. She couldn’t have gotten far in Donnie’s mind at all, Astraia assured herself.

She used her other hand to take notes, noting defensive mechanisms and areas she should very much avoid in deeper examinations (places she could recognize as hubs for fears, secrets, embarrassment, things of that nature. She was not going to intrude on his privacy anymore than she had to and if she had to go into those sections, she was going to ask for his permission first). Astraia bit her lip, realizing she couldn’t see anything that had Antola’s or any other mind-enchanter’s usual “touch”.

Astraia sat back, staring at the mostly clear ceiling (there were old educational posters up there. Simplified illustration of mathematical principles, the Fibonacci spiral, and things of that nature. She could spot Donnie’s typical handwriting written along the posters and she almost let herself get distracted by the image of him flying upside down to write his notes on the posters. Now wasn’t the time and yet...). She let the spell fade as she thought about how she wanted to go about this.

And that’s how Leo found her when he got back with a small paper baggy from Clem’s: staunchly staring at the ceiling, eyes squinted at some point in the deep spiral of Fibonacci as if it held secrets with Donnie’s goggles resting around her neck as Donnie himself napped like he was dead. One hand rested lightly on Donnie’s neck, absentmindedly rubbing a knot out of it, and the other making arcane sigils in the air as she considered her options.

Leo regarded the battleshell on the floor like it was going to bite him. He tread around it, giving it its space and more. In doing so, however, he missed the magazine on the floor. Leo slipped, but never hit the ground. He blinked, looking around as he floated in a gold aura. He looked over to see Astraia glaring at him with pinprick pupils with a wand in her hand, just shy of hissing and baring her teeth at him. Leo grinned apologetically and shrugged. Astraia rolled her eyes and gently put him down.

She gently touched Donnie’s shoulder. “Earth to sleeping genius, hello sleeping genius,” she muttered quietly, trying not to startle him. When he didn’t even flinch, she gently lifted him with the wand and watched his face carefully. Not even a sign of getting up. She silently unfolded the futon couch into a bed, gently putting him into it. She walked over to Leo and gestured with her head towards the door.

Leo portaled them out of there and gave her the bag. “So? What’s your diagnosis?”

“I have no earthly or unearthly idea what’s going on,” Astraia replied, sighing. “Where are the others?”

“Waiting out in the main room.”

“Wonderful, I need a soundboard,” Astraia replied, walking without Leonardo with her arms folded behind her back.


	5. Too Smart

Astraia paced back and forth in what she could guess was the living room with her arms folded behind her back. The three non-Donatello turtles were sitting on the floor with their legs crossed and April was using Raphael as a chair.

“So there’s nothing new in his head?” Raph asked, raising an eyebrow as he leaned back against the wall. “Like. At all?”

“I can’t exactly say that,” Astraia replied, taking care not to stomp at all. “I don’t have any information on what the inside of his mind looked like  _ before _ it was messed with. All I  _ can _ say is that there’s nothing that has Antola’s signature to it. Nothing with her fabrication style lying in its foundations.”

“So there’s nothing new...” Mikey trailed off and Astraia stopped pacing, giving him her undivided attention. Mikey blinked at her sudden shift, but continued at her gesturing. “But maybe...something that already existed has been added onto? Sometimes I can’t paint new stuff in alleys, because it’d let everyone know there was a new artist on the street. But I can y’know. Add to stuff. It’s taught me a lot of styles and that way, nobody knows it’s me.”

“Michael,” Astraia replied, settling her hands behind her back again, “have you ever had any magical training? At all?”

“I’ve barely got ninja training,” Mikey replied, scratching the back of his head. “Did...did I say something wrong?” His two present brothers got tense, defensive words obviously on the tip of their tongues.

She shook her head to stop them all cold. “Not in the slightest. I was just gauging if you had a natural talent for the thought process or if someone had given you teaching before.” She hummed, going back to her pacing. The three turtles relaxed and April rolled her eyes. “But if something’s been amplified, the question is  _ what?” _ Astraia took off her glamour, stretching her wings absentmindedly as she paced. “I noticed that he was more skittish and flighty, while also being more open to suggestion and less likely to question things. Why didn’t he question why I was there?”

Leo snorted. “Okay, that more open to suggestion thing? That was just when you were there. He was hella stubborn before I brought you into the room. There’s a  _ reason _ we went to the pile option: dude wouldn’t listen to words.”

“And he busted three locks learning how to lockpick,” Raph replied, giving a small smirk with his tiny fang sticking out. “Then he got out of three more locks.”

“Then the pile,” Leo replied, shaking his head with a degree of exasperation.

Astraia hummed, playing with the glamour necklace in her hand. “Has he ever been shy around girls before?”

“No,” April answered with zero hesitation. “Dude does not give a fuck.”

“That’s the impression I got,” Astraia replied, trying to hide a smile, “but wanted to be sure.” She hummed. “Maybe take April there in a couple hours. I want to see if the enchantment’s upped some kind of shyness around girls or something.”

“Why a couple of hours?” Raphael asked, blinking.

“Because I got him to sleep and, gods, did he look like he needed it,” Astraia answered. “He said he was keeping busy while you three were being ridiculous. How long has it been since...the Pile came into the picture?”

“Couple days,” Leo answered. He winced. “Should’ve guessed he’d try to marathon through the whole thing. He’s not the best at sleep.”

Astraia bit her tongue, stopping herself from saying the thought that she put that on her to-do list the moment she saw the bags under his eyes. “So let’s let him sleep while he’s willfully sleeping, yeah?”

“Sounds good,” chorused the four.

“In the meantime, I’m going to write up a medical form,” she replied. “Something to make sure if I mess up, that you’ll get help down Below. I’ve been fixing Antola’s fixes for five years now, but I’m in no way a certified professional.” She paused to grumble, “I’d be one if sphinxes were  _ allowed _ to be certified professionals.” Astraia resumed at her normal volume, “In the off chance that I mess up, I’ll take y’all down and pay for his treatment myself.”

“Why not do that now?” Leo asked. “If you’re so sure you’ll mess up.”

“I’m not so sure I’ll mess up,” Astraia answered, stopping her pacing to look him dead in the eye. “However, contingency plans are good to have. I’m not arrogant enough to say that I’m perfect at this and can do this without a backup plan. In any case, the form also gives me permission to look into deeper places, in case I can’t find it on the surface level. Antola’s got a habit of attaching things to fears, things like that. Would you rather I look at that, when I have a heavy respect for Donatello to never use anything I see in there against him, or would you rather a stranger and someone easily purchasable?”

The brothers all shared a look and April had a small, little smile with a twinkle in her eye.

“Aren’t you like,” Mikey asked slowly, “a thief for hire?”

“That’s of  _ stuff _ , typically magical artifacts that humans shouldn’t have,” Astraia replied. “If anyone asked me to steal information, I’d tell them off to go get a scrying ball. No, Donnie is special to me and I wouldn’t gossip about that stuff. I can say a soul-binding oath to the effect, if you’d like.”

Four sets of eyebrows were raised and Astraia looked away from their eyes. She was glad that her true form couldn’t blush and that they wouldn’t recognize the embarrassed motion of her tail wrapping around her ankle for what it was.

“That’s heavy,” Leo replied. “So like. Do we need an adult to sign it or can any family member do it?”

“Age 16 and up,” Astraia replied. “Why?”

There were a great many of curses. “If this happened a year later,” Raph grumbled, “we’d never have to get Splinter involved.”

Astraia’s jaw dropped. “Splinter?”

“Yeah, he’s our dad-”

“The missing magistrate of the Council of the Below is your  _ father?” _ she asked, running her claws through her hair. “Hamato Splinter, right?”

“...wait, you know-”

“Know  _ of _ him,” Astraia answered, picking her pacing back up again in a renewed agitated manner. “Once Hamato Yoshi, rose to notoriety with his mastering of evocation magic—his fireballs were legendary, he could call storms with but a word, and he could ice over any challenger to slice them in half evenly with his hand. He took the name Splinter when he rose to the Council as a magistrate and was the best damn thing to happen to it.”

“Uh. Maybe there’s another Splinter?” Mikey asked. “Prince and the pauper style?”

Astraia snorted. “Prince and the pauper seems to be closer to the truth,” she answered. “From the luxury of the Below to what he has up here. I can’t blame him, I’d make a similar decision if I was in a similar position, just-”

Her eyes flashed gold and she made a short side-step. Where she had been standing and pacing, there were spikes of ice sunken into the floor. She spun around, seeing the small rat-man standing with thick gauntlets of ice around his arms and claws of ice shining in the low light.

“Who do you serve, sphinx?” he asked.

Her eyes narrowed and she flexed her own claws. “Myself.”

He barked a laugh. “Impossible.”

“I’m the Mistake of Baron Bak,” she announced. “You knew him, Magistrate Splinter. You’d know that he was too clever for his own good. It was only a matter of time until he made a cruel mistake. Who else would be so cruel? To make an intelligent mind within the body of a slave?” Astraia did her best to ignore the shocked expressions of the three turtles present and April, but she knew she had to abandon the sugarcoating she’d used earlier. If this was Hamato Splinter, he would only take the unedited truth. She kept her eyes locked on Splinter’s, standing her ground with her lion-like tail whipping behind her. “My birth came after your...disappearance.”

His eyes were cold and shrewd, searching her own for lies. Slowly, he lowered his arms and the icy gauntlets melted into a puddle on the ground. “Blue, mop that,” he replied and Leo sprung to the task. “Sphinx, explain.”

“Were you familiar with Bak’s thesis on golems?” she asked, folding her arms behind her back. 

Splinter huffed. “No. He was long winded and insufferable.”

Astraia relaxed a hair. “If one were to take human technological programming and translate it to magic, how could such a project affect golem creation? It wouldn’t suit the techniques of Hebrew golems or European gargoyles, but the sphinx? We both know that the sphinx was supposed to be a magical wind-up toy, a weak imitation of someone living. They were already designed to have the mental echoes of a lost loved one. To replace that with the magical programming? It was possible, but the artificing necessary would be  _ legendary _ .”

“And expensive,” Splinter replied. “So. You are the result of his thesis. By your loose tongue and disorderly behavior, I don’t think he’d consider you a success.”

“A failure,” Astraia answered, nodding solemnly and looking down at her claws to make sure she had relaxed them.

“Any failure of Bak’s,” Splinter replied, “is allowed in my home.” Astraia looked up, blinking in wide-eyed amazement as he smiled at her. “I have as much reason to hate Bak as you do. If it wasn’t for Bak, Draxum wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did.”

Astraia’s jaw dropped. “Your disappearance...Draxum used his research to...” The puzzle pieces clicked in place for her and she felt her shoulders drop into a state of shock.

“Indeed,” Splinter replied, walking towards her. He reached her stomach in height and he wrapped an arm around her stomach. He guided her towards a beanbag and sat her down. “Are you a model of sphinx that can take in organic food or do I need to send Red out for charcoal?”

“I...no, that’s alright,” she answered, feeling a bit of whiplash from the whole thing. “You don’t need to bribe me to keep your secret. I can understand why you wouldn’t want to go back to a Council that never looked for you.”

“You can have shelter here,” Splinter replied, patting her hand.

Astraia blinked. “I didn’t come here because I knew you were here, sir,” she replied. “I came because Bak’s success has meddled with Donatello’s mind and I’ve been fixing her messes for years.”

Splinter’s assuring aura turned to that of anger. Astraia could understand why there were muttered stories of him spitting lightning with just an easy exhale. “What.”

“It’s what we were just talking about with her, Dad,” Raph replied, finally poking in. “You’ve been watching your show, so you didn’t see us uh...block Don in his room since he was out of it. Astraia here was our best bet.”

Splinter’s sharp gaze snapped from Raphael to her and back again. It settled on her and it softened. “Tell me what’s happened.”

She explained it to him and he listened with a keen ear. She saw his eyes soften when she repeated her offer of a soulbinding oath to assure him that she’d put Donnie back the same way he had been (he laughed, shook his head, and muttered in one of the old tongues, “Affectionate thing, aren’t you?” She felt herself grow warm at that and she had to stop herself from moving her wings to hide her face). 

Astraia withheld every question that bubbled in her mind: why hide his magic? Why not train his sons? Why not giving them the training to resist enchantment magic to begin with? Was it all for the facade to hide from those Below? His sons acted like they’d never seen this side of him before, looking at him as if he’d grown a second head. Astraia stored this information for later, planning on asking him about it when Donatello was alright.

She began drafting with him at her elbow, letting him guide her in her drafting to get a document that they could both agree on. When it was done, he signed it and put a small hand on her bicep.

“Be gentle with my son,” he replied. “His mind is sharp, but his shell is soft.”

Astraia gave him a nod. “It’s a good thing he builds augmentations for it, then,” she replied, allowing herself a soft smile.

He barked a laugh. “And how long will that protect him from a girl like you?”

“For as long as he wishes,” she answered, signing the document herself. Astraia got up, stretching her writing arm. “It takes two to tango, sir.”

They all waited the rest of the few hours, with Splinter explaining to his sons what past had caught up with them. How his life as a magistrate had been luxurious, but highly dangerous with others coveting his position. How he was considered strange for being happy with the role of magistrate and considered with suspicion for not doing everything in his power to rise higher to the role of having a barony. Astraia kept out of it, for the most part. When he came to the present day, she kept quiet still. Don came first. She could give Splinter the fifth degree another time.

Astraia watched Leo take April back behind the pile, waiting. Splinter came walking back to her perch, offering her a bucket of popcorn. She took a small handful, eating as her tail flicked back and forth.

“So,” Splinter replied, “what will you do if your hypothesis is wrong and the charm on Purple is centered on a specific infatuation?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Okay. In the off chance that  _ Donatello _ has an infatuation with me, which I very much doubt, I’d have to examine it closely within his mind. Figure out how much the charm has emphasized it, cut off just the emphasis.”

“With the Eros or the Psyche method?” he asked.

Astraia raised her other eyebrow at him. He was  _ quizzing _ her, the absolute ass. His sons could’ve benefited from the knowledge he was using to quiz her with, Donnie might not even  _ be _ in this situation if he’d given him even a  _ scrap _ of the theory of mental enchantment resistance, but he had the  _ gall _ to quiz her  _ now? _ She huffed. “Psyche,” she answered. “Anyone who argues for Eros method in this situation is out of their mind. Eros would be if the charm was attached to a physical object, such as an arrow hence the name. Psyche’s for mind-connected charms.”

“Very good,” he replied with a nod. “And if she left defenses for the charm?”

“Use the local terrain,” she answered, eyes narrowed. “Creating more things in the mind is actively counterproductive for the overall goal of  _ removing _ foreign matter and should be only a last resort. Better to use what Don has already created in his mind than to litter.”

Splinter looked pleased with this answer. “How long have you been certified?”

“Never,” she answered. “I’m a  _ sphinx _ . You don’t give a bus a driver's license.”

His ear flicked and he put a hand on her bicep. “My apologies. I have been away from the Below for some time and have made every move to forget what it’s like down there.”

Astraia gave him a Look. “You know that’s dangerous. If you hadn’t done that, Donatello might not-”

“Purple has no magical capacity-”

“He has a  _ name,” _ she growled quietly. She swapped to the old tongue he used earlier, “You can give me the faulty excuse of True Name Laws, but we both know that simply saying his true name isn’t going to do  _ shit. _ What’s your game, old man?”

“The less they know, the less danger they are in-”

_ “Bullshit,” _ she hissed, teeth bared. “That only works for humans. Draxum’s made sure that that will never work for you, ever again. You’re not human anymore, they’re not human. Abandon human protections because they’ve never worked for you in this state and never will work. I don’t know how they got involved, but if they see you as  _ father _ then they are  _ your _ responsibility and you  _ owe _ them-”

April’s voice broke Astraia out of her rage. “Uh, are you guys summoning a demon or something?” 

Astraia turned from Splinter, lowering her wings. When had she raised them? She folded them into a neat, clinical position behind her back. She gave Splinter a side-eye to let him know this discussion wasn’t over before turning fully to April. “No, April,” she answered in English, keeping her voice calm. “Arguing in the old tongues is just easier. What happened with Donnie?”

April raised an eyebrow at Astraia, looking back and forth from her to Splinter and back again. “He started rambling at me about poetry,” April answered. “But like. Wasn’t shy or anything. I tried to get him to eat, but he refused. Said he was too busy.”

Astraia refused to give Splinter the satisfaction of checking for any smugness. “Alright,” she replied. “So, it’s not linked to the presence of women, but to me.” She closed her eyes, rubbing her temple. “Joy of all joys. Silver lining is that narrows the search a lot. I just have to look in the darker sections of his color-coded mind. Or the gold, he could associate me with that color.”

“His what?” Leo asked.

Astraia let herself chuckle. “His mind is color-coded. Very neat.” She opened her eyes. “Though, with how all of you are color-coded, it wouldn’t surprise me if your minds are all color-coded in some way.” She hummed. “I should maps your minds later. If you end up mind-whammied, it’d be helpful to have a sample of what it looks like when you’re not mind-whammied.”

“Is mind-whammied a clinical term?” Mikey asked.

She snorted. “No. A clinical term for what Don’s going through is maybe a charm. Possibly a low level obsession charm, with possibilities of it having a timer to slowly turn it up.” Astraia hummed, stretching a wing. “That would explain the ‘looking for her’ bit. A base level component of that charm is to get to the target.”

“Sooooo...the pile was a good plan?” Raph asked, giving Leo a smug grin.

Astraia pressed her lips together. “Okay. Okay, after I solve this, I’m giving all of you evals,” she replied. “And I’m teaching someone how to do locking spells so you all can troll Donatello with it.”

* * *

Astraia watched Donatello eat with a set of narrowed eyes.

“The whole plate,” she replied.

“Astraia,” Donatello replied, raising an eyebrow at her. “I’m not that hungry. I’ve got stuff to do-”

She let her pinpoint pupils show from behind her glamour and he flinched before continuing to eat the plate of pizza (it was just two slices. According to his brothers, this was  _ light _ considering what he’d eat during his non-focus days). Stars, did this boy make her wings itch with irritation.

“How do you do that eye thing?” Donnie asked between bites. “I’ve never seen April make her pupils like. A pixel wide.”

Astraia wiggled her hands and fingers in a cheeky jazz hands gesture. “Magic.” Not a total lie.

“How does a human learn magic anyway?” Donnie asked. “Wait, can anyone learn magic?”

“Eat and I’ll explain,” she answered. “You pause in eating for anything other than breathing and drinks of water, I’ll stop.”

As expected (and to Astraia’s disappointment), he followed orders like a puppy dog. She sighed. “Anyone  _ can _ learn magic, no matter the species,” Astraia replied, “it just takes a lot of resources. There’s some people who have more of a natural inclination towards a school of magic, meaning that it takes less resources for them since they have a natural generation of that magic type. And before you ask, no, I don’t know what causes that. Nobody does. Even in artificial creatures, like golems, it manifests. Some people say that it has something to do with souls, with some souls just being more magically inclined than others, but I don’t buy it on account of what sort of reasoning that thought leads into. Stars know we don’t need another resurgence of the Homo Magi.” She scrunched her nose, glaring at a point on the ceiling. “Hate group, before you ask.”

He watched her with rapt attention, but something seemed off. He had an air of disappointment. He finished off his plate. “Okay,” Donatello replied, “but that doesn’t answer the question I meant.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Ask it more clearly then.”

“How did  _ you _ learn magic?” he asked.

Astraia blinked. She tilted her head at him. “Why do you want to know?”

“Maybe I want to get to know you better,” Donnie answered. She didn’t know what to make of that. His vocal tone was all over the place: surface-level lacking all emotion, but there were soft lilts in places that suggested hopefulness. Given the charm, she couldn’t take this as genuine interest.

“A story for another day,” she replied. “Maybe after you wake up from another nap.”

He groaned. “Astraia-”

“You were awake for a couple days straight,” Astraia cut him off. “And only had a couple hour nap. Humor me with another one.” She threw on the pout again, internally rolling her eyes as she saw Don’s resolve crumple.

“No snooping around the room,” he grumbled. “Or the lab.”

“I promise,” she replied, smiling so innocently that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. It wasn’t a lie: she wasn’t going to be prowling through either area.

They settled into the position they had previously on the futon couch, her sitting curled up at the end and him with his head in her lap. Astraia gently hummed him to sleep, watching him. Once she was sure he was asleep, she slowly spun his mind into view again. Seeing the intensely organized junkyard of his mind again, she relaxed. Okay. That was consistent, at least. Sometimes minds changed. She gently put a sleep charm on Donnie to make sure he didn’t wake up, then started to mix the ingredients. She mixed them by gently throwing them into the air with one hand, using her wand to mix them with the other and to keep them afloat, swirling them together into the mix she needed. She pulled up Donnie’s mask with one hand, dipping her finger into the slightly moist mixture. She drew a key-shape onto his forehead with her finger, closed her eyes, and blew on it.

She opened her eyes, finding herself standing beside a row of what she could only call car skeletons, their metal frames matte like untextured models without a light engine in a video game. She stretched her neck, like she was popping it, and did the same with her fingers and wings.

“Okay,” she muttered. “Where to start?”

“How about the cage, Mysterious Stranger?” Donnie’s voice came from behind her. “Or are you another hallucination? It gets so hard to tell after three days of hallucinations, not being able to control my body, and watching something else puppeteer things.”

Astraia looked closer into the pile of car skeletons, blinking as she saw something within them. “Donatello?”

“Present,” he deadpanned, staring at her from within the skeleton of what looked to be a small, electric go-kart. If he had physical sensation, she figured he’d be cramped from the tiny space by now, if he’d been in there since the charm was laid.

She tapped into her own emotions, taking the cool anger she had for Antola and letting it onto the surface of her hands. She ripped into the cage, her touch melting it and clawing Donnie out.

“So this is your mind’s unaltered form of you,” Astraia replied. She tilted her head, eyes lighting up gold and then she grinned. “Of course! Like a computer, you’d subconsciously save a backup. Brilliant.”

“I try, but while I’m so grateful for the busting out, I'mma need an answer,” Donatello (or as close to the real him as she was going to find) replied, “who the hell are you?”

She merely answered him with a smirk, a wink, and a drawled, “So slow, Donatello. You’re too smart for this.”

He groaned.


	6. Neuromancer: Stacking the Deck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Went on a HUGE writing binge today with focus specifically on this story. Came out with 8k words, but I cut it to what you see here, since the remaining 4k needs more adjusting before I'm happy with it. Hope y'all like it!

“So, what,” he replied, “is the claws, wings, and rocky appearance all a magical mind avatar?”

“A girl can’t look fancy when she magically inserts herself into a cute boy’s mind?” Astraia asked, flicking a hand towards her collarbone and resting her claws against the stone there.

Donnie raised an eyebrow. “Figured you already looked pretty fancy, with the catsuit and all. But if you’re not gonna just tell me, I’ll be honest: the real you looks nice.”

Astraia _stared_ at him. She blinked slowly, her tail wrapping around her ankle and her wings twitching. “How-”

“You always gave off a complex energy signature,” Donnie replied, smirking. It didn’t seem to be him smirking _at_ her, but rather it seemed to be him being _pleased_ with himself for her reaction and for the pieces of a puzzle sliding into place. “I always thought it was just you being _magic,_ but if that was the case, then why didn’t April’s computer give off the same kind of signature? Why didn’t your runes? Both had simpler energy signatures. Had to figure out the reason, since it’d make it easier to track you and understand your kit in the future. But the you out there—you’re pulling that off via using a different tool-set than what you’re naturally good at. There’s the part of the energy signature that’s the Divination magic, all spiky and gold up in your head, then there were two parts of it that weren’t that. But if you’re not human, it’d explain one part of the signature. It’s what you _are_ supplying that part of the energy signature, the part that was running through your veins on a deeper scan.”

“So you _have_ been checking me out,” Astraia teased on instinct, her eyes wide and her focus not entirely in it (there was no “meow-t” pun to be consciously seen by her when she was too busy trying to calm her heart from beating right out of her chest in a fit of fright and a tiny bit of fluttery attraction).

It was easier to calm herself when she saw Donnie—in a way that was so utterly _him_ that it made her _ache_ with how much she had missed it—roll his eyes and keep bulldozing through he was already doing without letting her stop him. “Also, you left a magical feather behind in April’s textbooks that just doesn’t make any sense by any law of science or _existence_ as I knew it.”

“Ah, there’s so much of my anatomy that wouldn’t make any sense to you whatsoever,” Astraia quipped and Donnie gave a loud huff in reply.

“God damn magic,” he grumbled so quietly that Astraia almost didn’t hear him. He straightened and she pretended she didn’t hear him grumble. “For the last part, it’s a type of magic that I’ve never seen you use,” Donnie replied, a smirk slowly spreading across his features like a cat who got the cream. “I didn’t even know what kind to think it was until right now, seeing you like this. Illusion magic, right?”

“You-” she sputtered and Donnie looked so delighted with himself that she was struck in her heart (the troublesome thing that she was trying so very hard to calm) with the urge to _kiss_ that look into submission. “You _stole_ my dramatic reveal, you absolutely unfair-”

“Hey,” he snickered, putting his hands up in the air, “last I checked, you _like_ when I play unfair. My brothers don’t play this kind of unfair, that’s why you only wanna _dance_ with me, right?”

“Stars,” she exhaled, a grin slowly spreading across her face, “I can’t believe I _missed_ you.”

Donnie blinked at that and she internally cheered. _“Ha,”_ she thought with smug glee, _“how does it_ **_feel_ ** _to have your thunder stolen?”_

“Okay, we’re coming back to that,” Donnie replied, then gestured to all of her, “and this at a later date.”

“Oh?” Astraia felt herself relax into her old position in their dynamic. “We’ll be going on a date?”

Then he leaned forward and booped her in the nose with one of his thick fingers so casually that she was emotionally kicked from her position of relaxed smug teasing, like a fly from a spider’s web. “Focus, Tiger-Eye, Astraia, whatever you wanna call yourself,” he replied, his voice matter-of-fact. “Something _else_ is running my body. I’d like it kicked ASAP. And banned. How do we do that?”

“We find it,” Astraia answered, keeping her pouting internal. “I’ll show you how to kill it, since I should keep my own involvement to a minimum.”

“Why?” Donnie asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Less foreign matter I put in your head the better,” Astraia answered. “I leave something behind and it could contaminate your entire view of the world. Good example, a mage brings a mental image of a sword into a pacifist diplomat’s mind to cut a low level fear charm from his core. After that, the diplomat was hyper aggressive.”

“So it’d be like a virus,” Donnie replied.

“Accurate enough for right now, we can get into semantics later,” Astraia replied. “So, let’s equip you for mind war. I want you to imagine four aces, each one from the four suits.”

“Why?”

“They’re a good memory learning device for this,” she answered. “Everyone knows cards. Not everyone knows Greek classical four elements or Four Deadly Horsemen. The four cardinal directions could work, but would open up debates into why I associate given concepts with any of the directions and I got tired of that after the third time and just-” Astraia paused at his smile. “Why is your face like that?”

“Hm?” He dropped it immediately. “Sorry, I’m listening.”

“The cards then, Donatello,” Astraia replied. “It’s your mind. You’re in control.”

He held out a hand half heartedly and drawled, “Abra kadabra cards a-grab-ra.”

Donnie’s eyes widened as a wireframe of four little playing cards appeared in his hand, with the model and textures slowly being added on. He held out the cards to her helplessly, and it made her take pity on him (so she didn’t tease him). Instead, she simply took the cards from him.

“Okay,” Astraia replied, holding up the ace of clubs. “Clubs. The least spicy of the two black suits.”

Donnie sighed in just the way she knew he would. Had too much practice at receiving his sighs. “Someday, I will write a translation guide to you. _Spicy?”_

Astraia hummed. “Emotionally charged? I use spicy as a shortcut word for that. Nobody feels really strongly about clubs. I’ve come across people who are passionate about hearts and spades and a few who swear up and down by diamonds, but clubs? A few weirdos here and there, but nothing staggering. I like your coloring and shape for this.” She tapped the card with a claw and his eyes immediately followed her golden claw to the grey, three leafed club in exactly perfect, mathematically sound circles and absolutely no serifs to be seen on the card. “It makes this easier to explain.”

“How?” Donnie asked, raising an eyebrow. “I wasn’t trying to make anything special. S’just cards. You said you could use any symbolism that came in groups of fours, so I don’t see why you’re making a big deal.”

“Okay, I’m purely using cards just for your benefit,” Astraia replied. “I could be using the more traditional terms, like cloak, centre, staff, and crown and heap it all in masculine bravado and martial analogy for you. So don’t try to even _begin_ to haze me with _ontological valence_ and what not because ontology is currently moot. I could go into a long, descriptive verbal-painting, describe somewhere in exacting detail to the point where you can’t help _but_ imagine it and we’d be there right now. On the back of a cow leaping over the moon or in the prestigious Khonsu’s palace. We’re in your _mind._ When I engage in mind war, I like to think of it as a strategy game, hence the cards. If you want to think of it as combat, I can change pace and talk in all the heavy war boots you’d like. If you wanted it as a tea party, I could give you sugar tongs, a napkin, a biscuit fork, and a tiara.”

“Tea parties aren’t my thing,” Donnie replied, watching her pace in front of him with a _Look_ in his eyes that Astraia had a hard time thinking was nothing. “So this is a complicated system, huh? Lots of details everywhere?”

“It’s all in the details, when it comes to the mind,” she answered. “So many people get all pretentious and whatnot when it comes to teaching mind-related magic, use giant words and brick up the concepts with jargon and argot until it’s a damn near unreachable to the normal lay-person, making malicious mind enchanters that much more _dangerous._ ” Astraia let her hands metaphorically fly as she spoke, making the sharp jabs to the air that Donnie was quickly dubbing her “magic” hands because she only got like _this_ when speaking about magic. There was a whole separate level to this observation that her disguise had been hiding: her wings twitched along with her hands as she spoke, like they were moving to the beats her hands were emphasizing and her words were making. Like she was dancing in tiny motions as she spoke.

He asked, “So, what details have I laid out for you?”

“You made the club different than usual clubs on playing cards,” Astraia replied, holding up the card in question. “Why is that?”

“I hate serifs in fonts, it’s a waste of pixels and/or ink. Context clues should be enough to separate letters. A capital I isn’t going to come in the same spot as a lowercase l in a lot of words of the English language.” Astraia had to stop herself from giggling at his answer and the deadpan expression on his face—masking whatever passion he had about this particular issue, no doubt. Donnie continued, “So I probably subconsciously cut the similar shape off of the club on the card.”

She gave him a nod, playing with the card between her fingers as she stopped her pacing and stood in front of him. “Well, it’s helpful for illustrating the tool I want you to associate with this suit: balance. There’s no serif-like objects helping the club stand: it’s all top heavy. The leaves of the club are all balancing each other and so you too have to be balanced when you go fight this thing. It’s hard to explain this one without getting people confused with optimistic platitudes, the type of things where some will think that they keep balanced by convincing themselves they’re a child of the universe and therefore cannot be moved from their balancing point. But that’s not it. It’s about taking your identity and holding it core to yourself with the strongest hold you can get. Keeping objective, staying cool and calm when everything goes pear-shaped.” She held the card up for him. “The club is balanced, hence why I use it to explain this. Any questions?”

“So you’re saying step one is to be emotionless,” Donnie answered. “I think I’ve found the one magic thing that’s my _thing.”_

“Don’t feel smug,” Astraia replied, using the card to boop him in the face.

“Smug’s not an emotion.”

“Smug, adjective.” She handed him the card. “Having or showing an excessive pride in oneself or one's achievements. Example: Astraia was feeling _smug_ after her _purrrrfect_ win over Donatello in Improvised Dictionary Olympics.”

Donnie snorted and held the card. “Okay, okay, I get it. That’s the first one. What’s next?”

Astraia pulled out the ace of diamonds. “This one. Armor. You’ve got yourself balanced, but what’s keeping things from grabbing in and taking you apart? I use diamonds for this because chainmail armor, almost. Or as close as I’m gonna _get,_ but hey beggars can’t be choosers. So the easy shortcut is to attach this to someone or something outside of yourself: a defender. Something you can always trust to have your back, that helps you keep your ish on the inside and the outside ish right where it is. This one you wanna answer subconsciously.” She held out the card to him.

He took it and the card’s colors started to change. The large diamond in the center of the card was originally red, but a section of it slowly bled into orange, then another yellow, and then the last blue. He blinked at it. “What does that even mean?”

“Donatello, your life is so color coded that it’s unbelievable,” Astraia snickered. “Red for Raphael. Orange for Mikey. Yellow for April. Blue for Leo.”

“...that seems really obvious in hindsight. Shit, we are _so_ color coded,” Donnie groaned, putting the card with the ace of clubs. “Okay, we agree we never tell the others about this.”

“Mmmm. We’ll talk about bribing me for secrecy later, right now other things to worry about,” Astraia replied. “Third card. Spades.”

“What, am I gonna dig my opponent a metaphysical grave?”

“Yes.”

Donatello blinked. She had answered so succinctly and exacting when he was prepared for a whole song and dance to explain this one. “What.”

She tilted her head at him and pursed her lips together. “Technology will always be inferior to magic.”

“What.”

“Technology is so limited,” Astraia continued, her eyes locked onto him as she stood perfectly still. “It’s so young and so primitive, you wouldn’t have been able to fix this situation with technology. Magic is older, more flexible, and entirely more refined than technology could even dream of _being.”_

Donnie narrowed his eyes at her. “Oh, I knew this day was coming. Tech’s not all metaphysically slaying as magic, but tech’s more flexible than you’re giving it credit for. For one, I can take tech into a lot more places than I can imagine someone could take something like a magic wand or a crystal ball. Can be built sturdier too. For two, weren’t you _just_ going on about people making things inaccessible to the normal lay-person? Magic’s _definitely_ not accessible to the normal person, being _hidden_ underground and kept a huge secret behind what I can assume are _purposefully_ constructed public assumptions that magic’s fake. Tech might be locked behind a few walls, some that are paywalls and some that aren’t, but at least you can master tech in less time than you ever could master magic-”

_“That-”_ Astraia replied, grinning like a Cheshire cat as she reached up and booped him between the nostrils with a finger “-is spades.”

Donnie blinked at her, first a quick blink, then a singular slow blink. “Did you...did you just trick me into a debate?”

“One that I wasn’t even intending on winning because that'd be a stupid thing to debate about. Magic and tech both have their niches and can coexist,” Astraia replied, folding her hands behind her back and keeping her grin at him. “Spades is all about what my mentor calls cool anger. It’s not spit and frenzy rage. It’s the cool grit, the starshine focus of emotion one needs to win an argument. Mind war’s an argument with special effects. Spades is your weapon.” She held out the card to him and he took it, a soft smile on his face.

“So, the last card?” Donnie asked, tilting his head at her.

Astraia held it up, the red heart stark against the whiter than bone card. “Hearts. Traditionally, it’s called the crown. This one is all about perception.”

“That seems counter-intuitive,” Donnie replied. “Using the heart, symbol of love, when love’s blind.”

“Easy misconception,” Astraia replied. She was tense, but it was a happy tension, Donatello noted. She wore the smug cat mask when on other people’s ground, something to hide behind. But on her own ground, like talking about something she was passionate and knowledgeable about, that’s when the sun _shone._ “It’s not love that’s blind, it’s _infatuation._ It’s crushes, small fleeting attractions, that are blind either willingly or subconsciously. Love’s all about seeing all the good, all the bad, and still sticking around anyway. Like with an infatuation, people get all _weird_ and flustery, letting that feeling change their behaviors and perception. Same concept in mind war: you don’t have a good grasp on this concept and the other guy gets to write their own rules. A good heart or a good crown, whichever you want to call it, lets you cut through it all and see what’s actually there.” She held out the last card to him and he slowly took it, his thumb brushing the heart along the card. “And that’s all you need.”

“Seriously?” Donnie held up the four cards, looking at them. “Four little cards?”

Astraia leaned up on her toes, flicking him between the eyes. “Taking things too literally at their ontological value,” Astraia replied. “That’s all well and good outside, but ontology is as effectual as a mug without a bottom in this situation.”

“But it’s _my_ mind, right?” Donnie asked. “I can make the ontological values of things mean anything I want.”

Astraia’s eyes lit up. Donnie’s eyes softened and she realized he must’ve finally noticed the crack in her eye. She moved along, humming as she turned and paced. “Theoretically, yes. You’d need a lot more practice to make your mind play along, though. And a dumber opponent. Antola’s unfortunately too skilled to try that theory out on and has most likely left behind a defense system for the charm, wherever it is.”

“Antola?” Donnie asked, tilting his head and raising an eyebrow. “You _know_ who did this to me?”

She stopped cold in her tracks. She closed her eyes, rolling her shoulders back as she cleared her throat. “Yes. I do. Full story later, but you could call her my replacement.”

Both of Donatello’s eyebrows were raised now. “For the record, if there wasn’t a foreign entity driving my body this instance, we’d be going over that full story.”

Astraia snorted. “Oh, Donnie. You’ve never been able to make me do _anything._ Why would that start now?”

“Because I’d just ask and live with the outcome,” Donnie answered, shrugging. “Whatever that’d be.” He gave her a small smirk as she stared at him with slightly widened pupils, nudging her shoulder with a playful elbow. “I’ve learned that cats don’t come when called.”

She gave a huff of a laugh, smiling a bit. “So you _can_ teach a turtle a few tricks,” she teased, booping between his nostrils. “Well, let’s see how fast you’ve learned mind war.”

“You know where the charm is?” he asked.

“I have a theory.” Astraia folded her hands behind her back, letting them rest against her lower back as she scanned the junkyard. “Thank the Stars for your color coded mind or this would take forever.”

“Wait, how can you tell what color’s what?” Donnie asked.

Astraia looked at him. “You associate a color from someone’s appearance with them. That was clear from the diamond ace. Your brothers with their masks, April with her coat-” She turned from him, stepping forward and walking along the impossibly straight line of cars. “I suspect that I’m either gold, for my eyes, or dark brown for my cat suit.”

“Wait, the charm’s in _your_ part of my mind?” Astraia’s attention perked at how his voice cracked as he said “your”. Hiding something, perhaps?

She gave him a nod, letting him have privacy behind her wings as she fast walked around his mind. She could hear Donatello following her. “Out there, the only behavior that’s changed is how you react to me. You’re more...suggestible when I tell you to do things. Suspected that it might be a general girl thing, but you weren’t anywhere near the same around April as you were me. With me, you were like puddy in my hands.” Astraia cleared her throat. “Metaphorically.”

“No, it’s coming back to me,” Donnie replied. “I thought that was all _daydreams_ it was cooking up to keep it—me, I guess—distracted while I was quarantined. That was _actually_ you pouting at me to eat and sleep?”

Astraia looked over her shoulder at him, pupils slightly narrowed from her usual pupil size. “Damn straight.”

“And got me to nap in your lap.”

Astraia’s tail wrapped around her ankle and she turned away from him. “It was the only way to get you to think I wasn’t going to snoop.”

He huffed. “Guess I must’ve forgotten you had _eyes_ and could snoop that way.”

“The charm has you boringly out of character,” Astraia drawled, forcing herself to unwind her tail from her ankle. “No challenge, whatsoever. But, regardless of the very obvious loophole, I didn’t snoop. So I’ve no idea what the charmed you was up to.”

She heard him stop walking and she stopped to look at him.

He was blinking at her, looking at her like she was some very complicated puzzle that kept having more and more pieces added to it. “You didn’t snoop.”

“Not a bit.”

“Why not?”

The answer was on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back _(“Because I promised you and I’ve never lied or broken a promise to you. How could I when it’s still_ **_you_ ** _?”_ _)_ and turned. Astraia hummed, putting her hand on a matte gold sports car and smiling. She raised her eyebrow at Donatello over her shoulder, purring, “Now, _this_ has my name practically all over it.”

He walked up to her side, looking the car up and down. “Lamborghini Reventón.” Donnie hummed. “Yeah, if I had to put any car to you, it’d be this one. It’s got a carbon fibre exterior, making it lighter than a lot of cars out there. Inside, it’s got these crisp TFT liquid crystal displays, about three of ‘em that give out instrument readings of the car that I’ve got ideas of how to improve for quicker data input from the V12 engine.”

“Let’s get in,” Astraia replied, bouncing a bit on her cat-like toes. She opened the passenger door, getting into the seat.

Donnie slowly followed, getting into the driver’s seat. “Why are we doing this?”

“While your mind does some computer-like routines, such as save backups of your personality and mindset,” Astraia answered, “I don’t think it does memories the same way. I’m theorizing this is how you store memories. In the cars of this junkyard, for you to salvage from. I’d drive, but you’re the only one who has the keys since, again, this is _your_ mind.”

“So, what, I just tell the car to go and it-”

* * *

Security footage, with the grainy-green night filter on. A museum with its exhibits intact. He flips between the wings, drowning out his brother’s chattering since it is the _same_ conversation they have had five times since they went out that night. “We’re so cool, we took out those paper thieves, haha”, leaving out that they could’ve been so much better, so much _smoother_ in their execution.

Wait. Blur on Camera 12. He watches that camera closely, turning it to slow motion. A vaguely humanoid shape, weaving between a cat’s cradle of security lasers. He taps buttons at his wrist, face scrunching in concentration. Before he can trip the alarm however, a smiling female human face fills the camera and stops him dead in his tracks right as his finger hovers above the button he’d need to alert the police _and_ his brothers. Despite the camera not having the best color perception, her eyes are solid molten gold. She’s slowly mouthing words to the camera and it takes him a minute to piece together what she’s saying. “I know you’re there. Enjoying the show?”

She winks at the camera, no at _him_ and leaves that camera. He chases her through the museum, from camera to camera. This girl is _playing_ with him, he realizes with a burst of indignation and a bundle of unknown emotions (emotions he’d realize later were _satisfaction_ and _delight_ ). Fine. _Fine._ Two can play that game.

He waits, watching her with a patience he’s only learned through sniping in video games. He watches her get to a glass case with a large diamond in it, gives her some grudging respect as he sees her disarm the security for the case with deft hands. He waits a little longer, ready to trigger the alarm right as she’s leaving. To spook her, teach her not to _mess_ with him like this. His eyes _widen_ as he watches her change course from her exit (a rooftop window that’s been disconnected from the rest of the window-based security system, it looks like) to approach a set of nearby lasers. She stares right into the camera he’s watching from and very _visibly_ sticks out her tongue at _him_ (there’s no doubt in his mind—she’s doing this all for _him)_ before she casually and _purposefully_ swipes her foot into one of the lasers.

His chest is bursting with bafflement, astonishment, confusion, and _another_ bundle of unknown emotions ( _amusement_ and _gratification_ , respectively) as he watches her blow a kiss to the camera before she springs out of her exit. He stares at the building between his brother’s position and the museum, wondering just exactly _who_ that girl was. He’s already keeping a mental countdown of his estimated time it’ll take the sound from the museum’s alarms to reach him and his brothers, but the milliseconds feel like _hours_ with all the _everything_ he’s feeling.

* * *

Donnie’s voice fell flat as he finished his sentence. “-went?”

Astraia’s pupils were blown up, large like a cat on catnip. She grinned at him, full of delight (whether it was _his_ from the memory or _hers_ from viewing the memory from his perspective was unclear to her, but it didn’t _matter)_ and _definitely_ her own gratification. “You _did_ enjoy the show,” she purred, unable to stop the purr of delight from entirely conquering her vocal tone.

“You were a heist movie but in _real life,”_ Donnie replied, words coming out uncharacteristically quickly. “It was the first time I was really seeing any kind of _skill_ like that before that wasn’t someone trying to brutally maim or hurt anybody. My brothers and I, we’re good, but you were like a _movie._ It was surreal.”

“I _was_ doing it all for you, by the way,” Astraia replied, grinning just a bit wider as she noticed his eyes light up at that. “I have a Divination talisman that tells me when people are watching me and from where. If you hadn’t been there, watching me, I would’ve been much faster. I slowed down for your benefit.” She stretched out like a cat in the sun, shifting her wide delighted grin to a lazy smile. “A girl like me _loves_ having an audience sometimes.”

Donnie gave a long suffering huff of a sigh and she gave him space, knowing that that was his “Loading, Loading 67% bar” of a sigh. She moved her gaze from him to her claws, inspecting them. Even with her gaze of of Donnie, Astraia can still practically hear him think. It’s all around her, in the car’s engine _purring_ all around her.

“We’re going to have to do that with other memories, aren’t we?” Donnie finally asked when he was done thinking so very hard.

She answered, “Mmmmhmmm. This’ll be so very educational, don’t you think?”

He groaned, putting his forehead against the steering wheel.


	7. Giuoco Piano

With a lot of the memories they went through, Donnie was nervous of the reactions she’d have from seeing his end of things during their fights. The frustration he had felt when she’d get away some nights was probably catnip to her, like that night at the museum, but the satisfaction of catching her? Watching her snarl? How would she feel that he _liked_ winning before he knew she was stealing to _live?_

A couple of car rides through those memories later and he opened his big mouth. “You doing okay?”

She looked over at him, her features molded in polite surprise. “Me?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “Who else would I be talking to?”

“An imaginary friend from childhood?” she asked, raising a hand and twirling her finger and hand in a way he recognized as her “I’m acting like a rich debutant to distract you” tactic.

He sighed and she lowered the hand. As she tilted her head, he asked, “Are you okay with seeing those fights from my end, Astraia?”

Donnie blinked as Astraia gave him a smirk. He let her get in his personal space and let her boop him between the nostrils.

“Donnie,” she answered, “all of that is _very_ educational and you know what I’m learning?”

“That I’m a try-hard and a sore loser?” he asked, quoting his brothers.

She snorted and leaned in close to his shoulder, looking up at him like a cat who got into the cream. “That we’re more alike than I’d have ever expected and that this car is _filled_ with try-hards and sore losers. I was feeling the _same_ way with each of those fights! Though, it was _purrrfectly_ cathartic to see that you were just as frustrated with Raph butting in that one time, shattering that purrfectly good skylight to ‘get a part of the action’ and _you didn’t want to share.”_ Astraia gently took a claw and tapped the corner of his lips, grinning smugly. “Christmas came early for the cat that waited on _that_ score.”

Donnie felt himself snort at that and playfully pushed her back into her seat. “You could’ve just _asked.”_

“Could I have?” Astraia asked, tilting her head at him. “Donnie, I’m a thief and someone you fight semi-regularly.”

“Not lately,” Donnie replied. “Since the pizza thing, you let up a bit. Here-”

* * *

He paces in his lab, eyes flicking intensely from computer to various walls with news clippings on them. Chronological order, from a few months before he and his brothers started doing this vigilante thing to around now. Mutant sightings are there and he’s already got good data on those and algorithms to try to figure out the ones with violent outbursts, but of course _she’s_ being tricky. It’s Tiger-Eye, if she doesn’t have a middle name it should be Tricky.

Donnie goes back to the beginning of the timeline, following the dark yellow yarn to track her specifically. A report about the bracelet of Cleopatra the VII going missing, describing it to have a cat carved along its length with an emerald eye and supposedly host to a magical enchantment with the right words. A statuette of a cat from Burma, something tied to Burmese legends about the first Burmese cat and souls, now missing. A golden staff with a cat’s head on it, its eyes made from opals, missing. The list went on and on, until the date he and Mikey stopped her from stealing the necklace.

“Panic at the Party,” Donnie mumbles to himself, reading the news clipping out loud, “Vicky Renald hosted a party at her penthouse, bringing together a large flock of her fellow socialites and celebrities. However, part way through the party, it was found out that the necklace that Vicky had been wearing that night had been somehow swapped with a fake. There are some who blame the necklace, because it has a significant history with Victorian England’s occult past, but it’s more likely it was the fact that Ms. Renald accidentally indulged in one of the many foods that she’s allergic to.” Donnie snorted. “More like someone snuck something into the food she was eating and got her sick, opening her up to being alone in a bathroom. Purrrrrfect for someone to slip in behind, act the sympathetic friend, and swap the two necklaces.” He groans, rubbing his temples with one hand by stretching his thumb and his finger across his face. “No. No we aren’t doing her purring thing. No. It’s ridiculous and superfluous.” He stops, looks around, and mumbles even quieter, “Purrrrrfectly ridiculous. Okay, maybe that’s _a little fun_.”

He moves from that day. There’s her attempt to take the Eye of Sekhmet, a metal circlet set with a large piece of lapis lazuli: large enough to pass as someone’s eye. Explains the name. Then there’s no thefts, but there is the report on the very _odd_ outbreak of food poisoning from Giorgio’s Pizza. An anonymous tip to the police put a lead on the perp being stationed somewhere in the southeast part of the city, which is notably where he and his brothers had seen that weird worm mutant the most. Tiger-Eye connected the two together, so it’s also possible that she called the cops on him too. Why? Where was the honor among thieves?

Except...it wasn’t stealing. She said he’d been trying to rope her into large scale murder. And she was notably not violent to civilians, sometimes even getting him to pause their spats because she noticed a kid getting too close to watch. It was just another reason why rooftops were their place: the likelihood of a civvie getting caught in the crossfire of what basically amounted to a hand-to-hand sparring match was minimal. And it usually took a lot of effort to get Tiger-Eye to stop running and to fight to begin with.

He underlines the note he made of her seeming preference for nonviolence, looking to the other news clippings along her yarn trail. There were scattered thefts from jewelry stores and museums, but there was another trend that was starting to show.

The first was a report he made April fill out, since April was the key witness. The basic summary of that event was that April had quit a job because her boss had been _“not the best, a bit of an asshole, the main reason I make ‘men are garbage’ jokes these days”._ When she was going back to grab her stuff, she ran into Tiger-Eye in civilian clothes. _“My ex-boss was sweating_ ~~_fucking_~~ _bullets, seeing Tiger act so friendly and nice to me.”_ Tiger-Eye helped April grab all of her stuff, coy and _“Mean Girl, total Mean Girl”._ When April got home, she realized that there was an envelope with money. A _lot_ of money. The note that Tiger-Eye had put inside was paperclipped to the report: _“April, darling, have a little present from Mr. Trevorson. I had a nice long talk with him about how it’d be such a shame if his treatment of you became widely known and he agreed, it’d hurt his business a great deal. So this is the first of three presents he’s going to give you, in return for you being quiet about this. I’d recommend keeping quiet for all three deliveries and then leaving a scorching yelp review. Maybe we can chat strategy about this over coffee, my treat?”_ Turns out, Tiger-Eye likes April enough to keep an eye on her. April got her to slow her roll a little, but the cat burglar had been so _“fucking pissed about how that ass treated me, it was weird. Nice, but weird.”_

The second was a transcript from a vlog. It was run by a single mother of two kids, who heavily featured in the vlog series as a whole. Usually, from the skim he did, it was a lot of the mother getting the kids to share what they wanted about their day. One day, the younger of the two, a little girl, went missing. A lot of the vlog entries during the time she was missing were all the mother begging people to help her find her little girl. Then, there was the tear-filled entry where the little girl was back. It was a long, 2 hour long thank you from the girl and her mother to the “cat lady with gold eyes” for getting her away from that “nasty man”. At the end, the little girl waved and did a good mimic of Tiger-Eye’s signature cat-like hand curl. _“Thank you for the purrfect rescue!”_ It was this transcript that caused Donnie to note a possible soft spot for children and now makes him underline it in his notes, a trickle of a soft spot for her forming in him without him fully realizing it at the time.

The third was a bit of footage from his own goggles. He had filled out the report himself. He’d been trying to keep up with Leo and Mikey, who had been racing each other to go try to use their “costumes” to get into a local video game store to buy the latest open world, post-apocalypse, first person shooter, crafting survival game ( _“This one has dinosaurs, Donnie,”_ they said. _“It’s totally different.”_ It wasn’t). Raph was busy, talking to their dad about something, so Donnie rose to try to be responsible by keeping an eye on them. They could handle themselves out on the surface, probably better than Donatello himself could, but it wouldn’t hurt for them to have backup if they needed it. He had been needing to get out of the lab anyway: same project for five days straight and it was driving him _crazy_ with how he couldn’t make a breakthrough on it (who knew that the idea of a fork that used the existing chlorophyll as a catalyst to incinerate vegetables was going to be this hard? Nobody could’ve predicted the battery storage issues).

So, he’d been following them when he’d spotted a familiar glint of gold on his scanner. He let his brothers go (which turned out to be a terrible idea, since they found out the game store had been growing vats of dinosaurs down below and _of course_ they had to intervene) and followed it. He found Tiger-Eye with a large bag and was about to intercept when she started taking out cat bowls from the bags, about thirty of them. She laid them about a large alley, seeming at random, but the way she placed them...too methodical, Donnie decides. There had been a system, he just doesn’t see the context at the moment. She started pouring food into the bowls and cats began to slink out of every nook and cranny of the alley. She stayed with them for a bit before slinking off towards the park. He followed, lightly mystified and confused and strangely _warm_ when he saw her sit next to one of the ponds. Out of her bag, she produced lettuce and left it on the bank, breaking the heads of it into smaller pieces. Then she scrambled behind a tree (giving a few of the onlookers a cheeky wink) and waited. Some of the turtles that the city put into the pond came out, eating the lettuce. It took him some repositioning (she’d almost looked _straight_ at him a few times, but always seemed to figure it was another passerby), but he got to a position where he could see what she was doing: she was taking notes. There’s a warm fuzziness in Donnie’s chest as he remembers the note-taking: it looked like Cornell note-taking from a distance, with two neat columns. Couldn’t make out her exact notes, but it was pretty clear from her staring at the turtles and then quick scribble-scribble-scribble that she was taking notes on the turtles.

This trend, Donnie decides there, seems to indicate that Tiger-Eye isn’t just a thief. Possible protective streak a mile wide and soft spots for children and animals. He can’t help himself from grinning, the giddiness bubbling up like a shaken soda.

“Maybe,” he whispers, touching the last pin in the corkboard, “she’s trying to understand _me_ like I’m trying to understand _her.”_ He hums over this a moment, pushing his goggles up and pulling them back down as he tries to decide how true that could be. He comes to a conclusion on the thirteenth time he pushes the goggles up. “Don’t have enough data,” he mumbles. “But if it is true...then that means she’s more than a thief.” He looks over at the picture he’s got of her, a selfie of her and April, and he feels the grin widen. “She’s a _scientist.”_

* * *

“-take a look,” Donnie finished.

He looked over at her and Astraia was staring at him with big eyes. He can see the crack in one of her eyes, illustrated pretty clearly by how _solidly_ the gold glow is right now. Donnie felt his face heat up and he scratched the back of his head.

“See?” he asked. “I don’t think of you as just an enemy. Sure, you steal stuff sometimes, but you don’t _just_ do that.”

“How did you even find the vlog?” Astraia asked, her voice trying so hard to be deadpan, but there’s a light, high fragile note in it that breaks through.

“I’ve got an internet alert for golden eyed cat girls,” Donnie answered. He frowned. “No that’s not right. It’s more...I’ve got an algorithm set to sift through local news and media to find mentions of you. I like keeping tabs on things.”

Astraia wondered, for a moment, if he considered what that implied. It’s not hard for Astraia, being who she is, to quickly decide that the behavior isn’t cute. An algorithm to stalk her through media hearsay and Internet nonsense. She scrunched her nose. “You’re going to turn that off when we’re out of here.”

“What?” Donnie asked, blinking. “Why?”

“Because it’s _creepy_ , Donnie,” she answered. “Why are you even keeping tabs on me to begin with? If it’s the stealing, then it’d be less creepy to make an algorithm based off of what potential targets for me to steal. If it’s curiosity about me as a person, then you’ve had ample opportunities to just _ask_ me.”

“Okay, but the problem there is, what if you lied?” Donnie asked. “Getting data from outside sources-”

“Donatello Splinter, if I was that malicious, then I could have _easily_ set up those instances,” Astraia answered, rubbing one of her temples with her pointer and middle fingers. “April is a _magnet_ for shitty bosses and jobs, it wouldn’t be hard to shadow her to one and take advantage of it. Had that bastard help me stage a rescue for that little girl. Used magic to put a marker on you so I’d know where you are at all times, then if you were close, improvise that little scene with the cats and the turtles. So not only is this behavior creepy, but on more malicious entities with my kit or something similar to my kit, it’d be _highly exploitable.”_ She grumbled, closing her eyes, “I was wondering how Antola found out about you, but if you’ve been _this_ noisy about me, leaving a large Internet footprint with the algorithm, it suddenly makes sense.”

“You’ve offered a counterpoint to my question, but never really answered it. What if you lied? You toy with me _all_ the time-”

“I do not!” Astraia growled. “I tease and _flirt,_ Donnie! But I have never, not once in any interaction, lied to you or acted with sincere malicious intent! Our spats aren’t to the death, it was a _game_ that we’ve both had fun in.”

“Oh, you say you never lie, but what about the rooftop?”

Astraia’s eyes snapped open. She looked at him carefully. “You’ll have to be specific. We’ve shared a lot of rooftops.”

Donnie rolled his eyes at her, huffing. “Valentine’s Day. You hacked my computer to get me to the rooftop of the Met to ‘talk’. I show up, you _tease_ and _flirt_ then you kiss me and then I get back home to find out you had been distracting me for a buddy, who had been fighting my brothers the whole time I was gone!”

Astraia blinked. Once. Twice. “...Donnie, can we examine that, for a second?”

“What’s there to examine?” Donnie huffed. “You tricked me.”

“Let’s look back at my history before that,” Astraia replied, keeping her voice calm while metaphorically stuffing all of her anger to her tail as it whipped about her feet. “Have I _ever_ worked with someone else?”

“How can I even be _sure_ of that-”

“Contact spells are Divination-based, there would’ve been large energy readings if I was doing an ongoing contact spell while fighting you. I can demonstrate to your heart’s content once we finish with the charm,” Astraia replied. “And, obviously, you’ve never seen me physically work with anyone, right?”

Donnie hummed. “Okay. Assuming I trust you about the energy spike thing, that’s two examples that you don’t work with people.”

“Three if we count me alerting you about the manticore poison thing,” Astraia replied.

Donnie tapped his fingers together in a slow tempo. “...yeah, that one implies that the only person you’ve ever really worked with, in my experience, is me.”

“There’s you, my mentor, and my clients,” Astraia replied, counting them off on her fingers. “None of whom help me in the field or do acquisitions while I run distraction. You actively get in my way when it comes to that, if my mentor was around you would very much know about it she’s an eight foot tall golem _made of lava_ -”

“I’m sorry, _what?”_ With the sharp “what”, Donnie threw his hands into the air, blinking quickly at Astraia.

_“Exactly,_ you wouldn’t just _not_ remember seeing her, glamours don’t work for her due to the fact that she’s _made of lava_. She’d just burn footsteps into things, illusion only covers visual and auditory perception, you’d _know_ if she was around,” Astraia replied. “And the big kicker is that she’s the worst thief I’ve ever come across in my short, but very colorful life!”

Donnie looked at her, trying to keep his face blank. “I...I have so many questions.”

“Later, this is important,” Astraia replied. “And my clients? If they could brute force their way to things or steal things, _why would they hire me in the first place?”_

“So...” Donnie frowned. “Who was working with you?”

“Nobody because the memory you’re referencing _never_ happened,” Astraia replied. “I would _never_ pull anything like that. Not to you, not to _anyone._ Have you _asked_ your brothers about it?”

“I...no,” Donnie answered, his frown hardening. “It was embarrassing. Why would I?”

Astraia inhaled deeply, biting back at least three separate comments about that. “It’s fine. It’s fine. You had no reason to suspect the memory was false. But this? This unlocks a very important question.”

“Uh huh?” Donnie watched her, tilting his head and leaning back in the driver’s seat a little.

“Why didn’t I detect the implanted memory?” Astraia asked. “I _checked_ the mental signatures of all your memories-”

“Wait, if you’ve looked through my memories-”

“Bad phrasing on my part,” Astraia huffed, running her claws through her hair. “Basic procedure in something like this? Think of memories like...code. Different coding styles have different formats, right?”

“Right, I follow,” Donnie answered.

“Memories are coded differently by different people. It’s honestly quite fascinating, I’ll have to show you different signatures outside, anyway, basically I checked the format. It’s a surface level, noninvasive check because memory signatures don’t reveal secrets or fears or anything that your mind would consider to be private or personal. What they do reveal is if an mind mage put in something new, because not even the _best_ mind mage can purrrfectly mimic any given memory signature.”

“Cat puns? Really? Right now?”

“Sh, I’m on a roll.” Astraia rolled her shoulders back, reaching back and rubbing where her wings met her back. “Anyway. You can’t mimic a memory signature because your own is too tangled up in how you perceive everything, so it leaves a footprint. Like looking at someone’s HTML coding and seeing that most of it has its italics coded in lowercase, but there’s a chunk of it with the I in between the less than and greater than symbols is uppercase. Not the best example, but it's a neighbor to the right ballpark of reference that I'm trying to give.”

“So you saw none of that in terms of Anatola’s signature in my memories, basically,” Donnie replied. “So, what are alternative ways she could’ve cheated the system?”

“It’s a fake memory, so I don’t know. Her stupid pink signature wasn’t anywhere in here, I don’t-” Astraia paused. “This is going to seem semi-random, but do you have vivid dreams, when you sleep?” Donnie raised an eyebrow at her and she rolled her eyes. “I promise, this is related and could help figure this out.”

“I used to,” Donnie answered, “when I was younger. Had nightmares a whole bunch. I stopped remembering them when I got older, but I still have them. Just don’t remember them. One of the many reasons why sleep is overrated.”

“HA!” Astraia clapped her hands together, grinning. “Donatello, she took a _nightmare_ and changed its file type! That’s how she did it! She weaponized something that _already_ had your signature!”

Donnie’s eyes widened. “That’s...wow. She could do that?”

“It’d be simple, if she knew what she was looking for,” Astraia replied. “It’s slightly worrying that she could do it mid-fight. No, I lie, it’s terrifying and I’m glad my mental wards are so experimental and efficient that she’s never going to get through them and I am going to teach you to set your own up.”

“So, what now?” Donnie asked. “I just...throw cards at her?”

“Oh your attempts to hold onto ontological valence would be cute if it wasn’t dangerous for your health right now,” Astraia replied. “Close your eyes and feel the energy of the cards. Remember how I described each one. Visualize it and internalize it. If it’ll make things easier, imagine that the energy is changing your mental avatar. So. Clubs.”

“Clubs is...staying centered in an argument,” Donnie replied, slowly closing his eyes. “How do I even _visualize_ that?”

“What helps you stay centered?” Astraia asked. “What helps you think that your feet are under you in any given situation?”

Donnie hummed and he reached outside the car with a hand. Astraia watched, patiently, and smiled softly as she saw him grab a toolbelt out of “nothing”. He put it on. “What’s next?”

“Diamonds.” Astraia leaned back. “Your brothers and April is what your subconscious supplied earlier for that.”

“Right.” Parts of the purple attire Donnie wore spun through colors like an old Windows Video Maker effect, shifting through the rainbow before settling on red, yellow, blue, and orange at seeming random. The battle shell morphed to an imitation of Raph’s bigger, harder shell while Mikey’s signature doodles appeared elsewhere. Leo’s facial stripes, Astraia noted, seemed to be mimicked as well though she could only see the very bottom of them from under Donnie’s mask. The outline of April’s glasses settled into his mask, making the pattern there rather than manifesting the glasses directly (Astraia bit her tongue on another tease about him clinging to ontological valence—yes, he couldn’t wear the glasses in real life, this _wasn’t_ that and played by different rules and she would’ve thought he would’ve embraced that by now, but it didn’t seem like it). “I probably look ridiculous.”

“It’s mind war, everyone looks ridiculous if they actually have a life worth fighting for because life _is_ ridiculous,” Astraia assured him. “Spades.”

“Already ahead of you,” Donnie replied, taking out a small metal cylinder.

“Is that...is that an even _higher tech_ version of your bo staff?” Astraia pretended to be surprised, putting it all into her voice for his benefit.

He smirked. “Yuuuuuuup. Completely collapsible without compromising material integrity and has a couple of other nasty surprises. It’d never work out in the real world, haven’t figured out the science to make it all work together, but hey, I’m in control here, what I say goes, yeah?”

“Yes.” Astraia smirked, relaxing a bit. “Now you’re getting it. Hearts.”

He opened his eyes and they...they glowed golden, like her own. No pupils, just a golden magical glow. Complete with a missing bit of glow due to the crack in her eye, he mimicked that too. Astraia blinked at that, opening her mouth to question that, but he put up a hand.

“So I just...go at the memory and the charm should be there?” He asked.

“I...yes,” Astraia replied. “You go into the memory, like we have been, but instead of letting it play, you pause it. Think of it as going into the source code of a file.”

“And fighting the virus in it,” Donnie replied.

She nodded slowly. There were too many emotions going through her, making her chest feel...heavy and bloated. She reached out and touched his face, gently cupping the side of it. Astraia said, “You better win.”

He smirked, not leaning out of her hand. “I’ve got a solid 72% win rate against you and a 100% win rate against viruses. I domesticated a Trojan horse virus as a summer project when I was 8. This should be fine.”

“No smugness,” she replied, narrowing the glow of her eyes. “Focus. Antola’s...Antola’s got no moral integrity and is out to hurt you intensely.”

“No,” Donnie replied, “I think, if I’m reading the subtext right, this is about hurting you intensely.”

Astraia looked away from him and removed her hand. “I...I’m sorry you got caught in the crossfire.”

“Eh,” Donnie replied, reaching over and tapping her chin to get her to look back over at him. “It’s been educational. We’re going to have a _long_ talk when I’m done here.”

“Yeah?” Astraia asked, tilting her head.

“Yeah.” Donnie gave her a smile. “I owe you a pizza, at least.”

She snorted, smiling softly. “As I told your brothers _many_ times, I’m doing this for free.”

“How heroic of you,” Donnie teased. “And you said you couldn’t do it.”

“It truly _doesn’t_ pay as well,” Astraia replied. “Not...not monetarily.”

Donnie raised his eyebrows. “What does it pay in then?”

Astraia opened the car door and got out. She walked over to the other side, leaned in through the window, and whispered in his ear, “We’ll talk about that when you win.”

“Oh? Not going to watch?” Donnie asked.

“Can’t. Not only would you try to show off-” she flicked between his nostrils “-but if I’m there and on the off-chance that you lose, she’ll have a direct entry into my mind past my wards. If she gets me too, there’s no fixing this nicely.”

“So, should we like-”

“Establish a password so I’ll know it’s really you?” Astraia finished his sentence. _“Yes._ Yes we should. Scottish fold.”

He blinked at that. “...okay, you’ve got bird wings too, you could easily also have a bird thing on top of the cat thing, y’know.”

“Cats are more fun, though owl keep that in mind,” Astraia replied, grinning at him as he groaned.

“That was _terrible,_ forget I said anything,” Donnie replied. “Scottish fold. Got it.”

“Good.” She stood up straight, stepping away from the car. “Good luck, Donnie.”

“Please, I don’t need luck-”

Astraia snorted. “Take the social bonding variant of a phatic utterance for once in your life, you absolute nerd.” And with that, she pulled back from his mind and opened her eyes in the real world.

She sat up, her back protesting from having been bent in half for so long, and looked down at Donnie. Still laying in her lap, still under the sleep charm. She kept it that way, making sure it didn’t get smudged.

“It’s all up to you,” she muttered. “Take it down.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The flashback scene and its aftermath is what delayed this so massively. Originally, I was going to frame Donnie's record-keeping and "keeping tabs" as something cute, but the more I thought about it, the more it felt like stalking. So _that_ had to be addressed. Hopefully, after its many, many iterations, it works as a scene and doesn't do either of the characters any injustice. I also hope that the nods to the turtle bros' silliness are appreciated, since I realize that I have a habit of taking things and writing them as more serious than the source material's tone actually _is_.
> 
> RIP many, many fight scenes that used to be in the beginning of this chapter. You all were so useless to providing context to their relationship because all of you were retreading the same ground as the fight scene in "Liar". The only remains of any of these fight scenes is the "Raph bursting through the skylight" scene that Astraia references. As it's Internet-dust now, I can only inform you that it had many, many, many gratuitous Kool-Aid Man references. So many that it's definitely for the better that the actual prose variant of the scene should never see the light of day.
> 
> With the mini-mindscape arc mechanics having been fully thrown into the open now, I have to reveal that I am a filthy, filthy Homestuck and reveal that a lot of the mind war mechanics Astraia explains are the same from a very old and (I won't lie) _odd_ Homestuck fanfic, "Scarlet and Bible Black" by paraTactician. Without that fic, I wouldn't be the person I am and so, the nod felt appropriate. The fact that the mechanics came from a Homestuck fic was lampshaded by the use of playing cards in Astraia's explanation, something I felt very cheeky about doing. The actual fic was referenced in Astraia and Donnie's banter about "smug" last chapter and in how Donnie forms his "mind war" attire.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's been leaving comments! They're seriously motivating as I go back and forth to a seriously hellish job and make my day every time I see them (and/or every time Ao3 actually _tells_ me they're there with an email alert).


End file.
